Franco Battiato

Out in cinemas from February 2 to 4, as a special event, is "Franco Battiato. Il lungo viaggio", a film directed by Renato De Maria, co-produced by Rai Fiction and Casta Diva Pictures and written by Monica Rametta. The film will then air on Rai1 and RaiPlay.

How do you go about making a Rai1 biopic on a sacred monster of Italian music like Franco Battiato? It was no easy task, given the varied, prestigious and experience-rich career of the Sicilian artist; moreover, his biography contains no sensational plot twists, no scandalous love affairs, nor excesses that would make for particularly juicy TV drama. The choice, therefore, was to tell the story of the period running from the early Seventies to the end of the Nineties, focusing on the people who marked Battiato so deeply that they sparked new passions in him and an ever more intense spirituality – although it should be noted that a crucial figure such as the philosopher Manlio Sgalambro, who collaborated with Battiato from 1994 onwards, has been entirely erased from the story.

What emerges, in particular, are: his mother Grazia, a key figure in the Sicilian musician's life – dearly loved, always present (unlike his father, portrayed as almost absent), yet never suffocating or overly conventional; Fleur Jaggy, a refined intellectual with whom Battiato wove a deep relationship "emancipated from the nightmare of passions"; Juri Camisasca, torn between musical and religious vocation; also very well handled are the characters of Giusto Pio, a genius with a subtle sense of irony, and above all Giuni Russo, whose anger and frustration are given due weight at the moment she realizes her career isn't taking off and that the song "Per Elisa" had been handed to Alice instead of her (needlessly long and grating, on the other hand, is the chapter dealing with her relationship with a young fan, played by Joan Thiele).

It's a shame, on the other hand, to see Gianni Sassi reduced to a caricature — he was the man chiefly responsible, back in 1971, for Battiato's success, having devised the provocative covers of "Fetus" and "Pollution" as well as the famous image for the Busnelli sofa ad. We have our doubts that Sassi, while photographing Battiato dolled up like a geisha, actually exclaimed "This is history in the making!" with the accent of a Brianza deli owner and the manner of a pushy ad man... But that, as we know, is the risk every biopic runs.

As for the lead, he is the true gem of this film: young Dario Aita, already seen in Sorrentino's "Parthenope", uncannily recalls Battiato in his movements, his pauses, and his way of speaking and singing, without ever slipping into mere impersonation, because what defines him above all is the posture and restless gaze of a young man who feels he belongs to another space and another time. The actor claims to have been "inhabited by the sound" of Battiato in order to play him. Simona Malato's performance as mother Grazia is also remarkable.

The film's other great leading lady is... the city of Milan. Even as a boy in Catania, Battiato dreamed of moving to Milan. Around Milan in the Seventies and Eighties revolved the entire world of record labels and their managers, including the great Angelo Carrara. A world of record company offices and recording studios that takes up considerable space in the film, though here too not without the odd caricature-like excess (some characters come across as far too greedy and boorish).

In the libertarian, culturally buzzing Milan of the Seventies, it could happen that figures like Giorgio Gaber, Ombretta Colli, Roberto Calasso and Fleur Jaggy — who was, in fact, Calasso's wife — would invite you into their refined drawing room without ceremony, even if, like Battiato at the time, you were an unknown musician without a penny to your name. In Milan you could get close to classical music even if you were a long-haired kid who couldn't read sheet music, and a prestigious piano teacher would offer to give you lessons asking nothing in return. De Maria portrays this Milan beautifully, through magnificent glimpses and little-celebrated corners of the city, from back alleys to historic houses to the bell towers of the centre. However, to bring out the city's local flavour, the film leans a little too often on that same Brianza-deli-owner accent mentioned earlier: in short, people in 1970s Milan didn't actually talk that way. Far more natural, and almost touching, is instead the use of Sicilian in certain expressions from the protagonist and his mother, carefully measured out over the course of the story.

De Maria's film is thus an inward journey through the identities of Franco Battiato, divided up—perhaps a bit schematically—by period: the early phase of the love songs of the late 1960s, the electronic and avant-garde music of the 1970s, the pop song era of the 1980s sealed by the breakthrough of "His Master's Voice", and the spirituality of the following decade. On the whole, it's a journey in which the musical side of things ends up somewhat shortchanged, handled in a rather patchy, fragmented way. At times, perhaps precisely because of the sheer size of his output, the screenplay ends up feeling far too didactic: at one point Battiato explains in painstaking detail what the VCS3 synthesizer is, how it works, who owns one, how much it costs and why; we're shown the Sicilian singer-songwriter's and his band's earliest shows as if they played with the fury of Einstürzende Neubauten; at other times, though, key passages are simply left out: where, for instance, does Battiato's passion for Sufism, for whirling dervishes and for Middle Eastern imagery come from, so present in his albums starting with "L'era del cinghiale bianco"? All of this is dispatched by showing the cover of a book by Gurdjieff, taking for granted that everyone already knows his esoteric thought, before leaving us with a scene—admittedly quite striking—in which Battiato performs, together with a large group of dancers, the sacred dances inspired by the Armenian mystic's teachings. A theme the Sicilian artist clearly held very dear, and one that would perhaps have deserved a few more scenes.

It should be noted, however, that some of the directorial choices are decidedly effective, such as those tied to the billboards of the aforementioned Divani Busnelli, to the death of Battiato and his mother, and to the use of the television screen, deployed in just the right measure both for narrative and production needs, in an era—the 1980s—when television was absolutely central to Italians' lives and collective imagination. A few examples: the shared viewing of the 1981 Sanremo festival with Alice singing "Per Elisa"; Giuni Russo finally reaching success in 1982 with "Un'estate al mare"; the famous video for "Centro di gravità permanente"; Battiato's mother watching on TV as her son sings "E ti vengo a cercare" for Pope John Paul II in the Sala Nervi at the Vatican: everything is filtered through the television screen. One might also detect, finally, an echo of another famous music video: the film features a sort of recurring vision/hallucination showing Battiato walking at the foot of a snow-capped Mount Etna... isn't this, in spirit and concept, a nod to "Enjoy The Silence" by Depeche Mode?

Overall, the film manages to trace Franco Battiato's "earthly transit" with reasonable care and attention, helped along by Aita's convincing performance, decidedly at ease in the role (which was by no means a given). Some limitations remain, though, typical of this kind of production, including a certain superficiality in the analysis. To fully grasp the scope of the Sicilian musician, then, there's nothing for it but to turn once again to the best tools he left us: his works.

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