TIFF24: First Look at Joe Wright’s “M. Son of the Century”
This review was originally posted on TV Obsessive.
Before the world premiere screening at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival began, director Joe Wright and lead actor Luca Marinelli took the stage to introduce their series: M – Son of the Century. It’s an eight-episode series about the rise of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini (Marinelli). To wrap up the introduction, Marinelli exclaimed, “Long live love and long live anti-fascism!” It’s this sentiment that is the driving engine for both Wright and Marinelli in creating this series.
M – Son of the Century is adapted from Antonio Scurati’s novel of the same name from 2018. The book (and series) follows Mussolini in the immediate aftermath of World War I and tells how he became Il Duce. The first two episodes, which were screened for TIFF audiences, showed the establishment of his newspaper, In Popolo d’Italia, as well as the role the Italian city of Fiume played in his rise to power. For many, this is an aspect of Italian history that isn’t nearly as well-known as other events of World War II. When Mussolini is the focus of a film or TV series, it is often related to his relationship with Adolf Hitler.
Unsurprisingly, given the state of the world today, Wright’s series is interested in the how and why of Mussolini’s rise to power. Even in the first two episodes, he paints a clear picture of the disillusioned young veterans who are living in post-WWI Italy. The feeling of desperation and the idea that they aren’t being treated the way they feel they deserve to be is not unlike the current social climate. We’re simply seeing it through a modern lens, where lost and lonely people are turning to greater and greater extremes to find an outlet for their anger. History has proven that, in times of social upheaval, humans turn to charismatic leaders who promise law and order in an increasingly unstable world. M – Son of the Century is an essential dissection of why humans search for figures like Mussolini, and an acknowledgement that we must change our ways to avoid repeating our mistakes.
Courtesy of TIFF
Wright is best known for his period piece work. His take on Pride & Prejudice is revered by some (like myself) as one of the greatest adaptations of Jane Austen’s most famous work. There’s a fluidity and grace to his work in Pride & Prejudice, Atonement, and the underrated Cyrano. He’s a man known for his films’ gentleness and beauty. It is without a doubt that M – Son of the Century is his ugliest, nastiest piece of work. That’s not an insult, but a compliment to his ability to morph himself into something new to best sell the message of M – Son of the Century. Wright needed to capture the charisma that added to Mussolini’s rise in power, as well as his terrible nature and ideations. This makes the series frantic, energized, and gritty. In the post-screening Q&A, Wright mentioned specifically wanting to capture a younger audience with this series, so he uncharacteristically employs fast cuts and fourth-wall breaks. These choices create something that feels like entertainment and education at the same time.
M – Son of the Century needs to capture how Mussolini was seen in the early 1900s as a voice for the disenfranchised, the desperate, and the angry. Marinelli’s performance as Mussolini is enigmatic, and the audience might catch themselves swept up in what Wright and Marinelli have put together before shuddering, remembering who it is they’re seeing on screen and the horrors to come. That, however, is exactly the idea Wright is looking to explore and the feeling he wants audiences to have so they too can understand how leaders like Mussolini still exist today. At the core of M – Son of the Century are masculinity and the different ways it manifests itself. In the time of Mussolini, there was a specific ideology of what it meant to be a “man.” Mussolini molded himself to fit that in order to gain sympathy and support from the lost men who wanted to fit the unreachable idea of masculinity that society had created. As Barbie taught us last year, masculinity hurts all of us.
There are clear ties between M – Son of the Century and the current state of world politics. The United States is in the midst of an election year that is already unprecedented. It was slightly surreal to see these first two episodes on the same day as the first presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. Even though Wright avoided creating outright parallels between then and now, the connections are palpable and deeply uncomfortable. M – Son of the Century shows the world on a precipice, one that we have seemingly returned to over one hundred years later. We can only hope for a different outcome this time around.
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