Quartile rating: 7.5/10 · 1 rating
In 19th-century Italy, Giacomo Leopardi channels his debilitating illness and isolation into poetry.
Mario Martone's biographical portrait of Giacomo Leopardi is a visually accomplished and unusually interior take on the poet's life, with Elio Germano delivering a physically and emotionally committed performance as the hunchbacked, chronically ill poet. The cinematography captures both the oppressive grandeur of the Leopardi family home and the wider Italian landscape with painterly deliberateness. However, the narrative structure follows a fairly conventional cradle-to-grave biographical arc, and the ending, while tonally appropriate, does not fully resolve the film's thematic ambitions with distinctiveness. The film is elevated above the average biopic by its literary seriousness and Germano's work, but its episodic plotting limits overall impact.