Interview curated by Lorenzo Lamberti
We present the written version of the video interview recorded at the 82nd Venice Film Festival for the Casa Chiaroscuro project, supported by our sponsors and friends Canon, Frame by Frame and Fotodiego, whom we thank once again.
In an age dominated by certainties and simplifications that deny complexity, La grazia Paolo Sorrentino’s La Grazia proves to be a necessary work. At the center of the narrative, an imaginary President of the Republic chooses the path of doubt. We discussed it with director of photography Daria D’Antonio CCS. How does one approach a film whose thematic core is so deeply bound up with ethics and a sense of responsibility?
With doubt, precisely. I believe this film is indeed necessary because it addresses crucial ethical issues at a complex, painful historical moment that is almost devoid of hope. Paolo chose to pose questions—questions that do not necessarily demand answers. My approach was one of total adherence to the narrative: we wanted to portray a man in the grip of an existential crisis, burdened by immense responsibility. We tried to place him within the spaces in which he operates, spaces in which he does not feel at ease. From an aesthetic point of view, the main reference has been
the paintings of Lucian Freud, especially in terms of color rendering and atmosphere: the film is dominated by brown and grey tones, with a reduced palette and highly contrasted lighting. In my view, this contrast represents the dualism between certainty and doubt: light reveals, while darkness conceals—or invites us to search for something deeper.
This is your third film as director of photography with Paolo Sorrentino: compared with the previous two, as we have already noted, it carries a far stronger ethical and political charge. I think this is why, both visually and photographically, it is a more essential, pared-down film. How did you work in relation to this sense of essentiality? Did you give up certain potential virtuosities?
It came quite naturally; every film has its own language. Paolo is an auteur with a strong, distinctive signature, but he is also someone who continually renews himself. Amid the stuccoes, damask-covered walls, and ornamental details, we wanted to stay focused on the man—on his doubts, his crisis. Nothing else was needed. Just him and the characters orbiting around him, who open up different perspectives.
The film features many places of power: the Quirinale in Rome and the interiors, which I know you shot in Piedmont, in Turin. How do you stage places of power without falling into the trap of the institutional postcard, or of an Italy that has already been told and seen?
I don’t know how one does it, but certainly the main advantage of working with Paolo lies first and foremost in the precision of his writing. Although he is a man of few words—at least in his professional relationship with me—there is an understanding between us that goes beyond verbal language, the result of a collaboration that is by now well established. The film shows a man occupying a space, but the real focus is what stirs within his mind: on the one hand, the weight of responsibility and the decisions he is called upon to make; on the other, memories and affections. In this sense, space is a container, not the content. For me it was essential to visit the Quirinale; since we could not shoot there, for obvious reasons, it was necessary to grasp its essence. I was struck by those deserted, majestic, immense places: I wanted to emphasize precisely the contrast between the smallness of the human being and the austerity of such a vast environment. I find the film’s reflection on the responsibility each of us has towards our own life and towards others extremely compelling. The President is not merely a figure of power; he is also a man and a father. His private, personal moral dilemmas amplify the doubts connected to his public role. To this I would add a theme I loved very much: the gaze towards new generations. The film questions the future and what we can learn from the young—their impulses and their ability to challenge our certainties.
Yes, that’s true—the relationship with his children is central.
At first, the protagonist struggles to accept his son’s dedication to electronic music, being himself a devotee of classical music. Yet this eventually gives way to an openness toward a different musical language, prompting a questioning of certainties—an exercise that each of us should practice more diligently.
You not only oversee the cinematography but also operate the A camera yourself. How much does this help you achieve a more coherent photographic approach, and how much can it sometimes be difficult or create challenges?
It is a more complex approach, but at the same time a stimulating one. I consider it necessary because it allows me to immerse myself deeply in the narrative, remaining attentive in real time not only to the screenplay but to everything that happens on set—from the actors’ performances to Paolo’s sudden intuitions. This demands constant attention and a responsiveness that, for me, are fundamental. On the other hand, I wouldn’t know how to work any other way; it is a method I have internalized and now find indispensable. It is a creative dimension I love, because it activates the senses and keeps the mind in constant motion.
The film has a distinctive rhythm, alternating between stillness and moments of frenzy. I’m thinking, for instance, of the sequence in which the President of Portugal visits the Italian President and rain and wind throw everything into disarray. To what extent was this alternation of rhythms planned in advance, and how did you work with Paolo in relation to this?
They are jolts that come to disturb a kind of immutable calm produced by certainty and stability. Paolo wanted these short circuits to exist, so that stillness—or rather sobriety and rigor—would be interrupted by shocks, which are precisely what challenge you and make you think. They are very important moments, adding meaning to the narrative. Nothing is accidental. The camera, the point of view, the decision to choose one framing rather than another, or one movement rather than another: everything is intrinsic to the storytelling.
Mariano De Santis is an imaginary president but, in some way, a very plausible one, firmly rooted in our everyday reality—one could easily imagine a real president appearing just like this. Was there research into the visual imagery of men in power, or is it purely invention?
The film contains no direct references to current events, even though it carries echoes of what has been. It represents a country I would hope to see again: a place where even a man who is deeply Catholic and firmly rooted in his convictions is willing to consider different points of view. Since this is an invented context, I did not look to real political models. As far as my work was concerned, it was more important to look at Lucian Freud’s representations of the human figure: his men are portrayed in almost anonymous settings, they seem to blend into their surroundings and often appear crushed by the weight of responsibility and vulnerability. We frequently chose a high-angle point of view precisely to emphasize this condition. I don’t like to theorize my choices excessively; I envy those who can put every creative impulse into words. My own approach, instead, is profoundly instinctive.
The high-angle shots establish a very strong relationship between the human subject and places of power and vast dilemmas. By contrast, when it comes to private life, it seemed to me that the film returns to a sense of normality: the apartments, domestic life, the relationship with the children. Was this a contrast you were deliberately seeking?
In the film, the home is a place of memory, where the protagonist lives alongside the remembrance of a loved one and a loss that has never been fully overcome. Yet that very house represents his reassuring space. If, in institutional settings, the man feels ‘small’ because of their oppressive grandeur, within the domestic sphere that same smallness becomes intimate and protective. The intention was precisely to reduce the space, to draw closer around the character. We chose an authentic, middle-class home that would reflect the life of two people of a certain age. Within this context we introduced a stronger presence of colour—an element we had deliberately excluded from places of power and from institutional clothing, because in those spaces colour does not exist. Colour re-emerges when the protagonist opens himself up to the outside world, towards other people, or when he retreats within the domestic walls: perhaps the only safe place where he can finally feel at peace and light, perhaps free.
When one speaks of ethical films, it is very difficult not to think of The Decalogue. by Krzysztof Kieślowski. Was it ever a reference? And, beyond that, on a personal level, was it a viewing that helped you in the past?
Kieślowski’s The Decalogue was not a direct reference for La Grazia, but it is a work that marked me deeply when I first saw it in my early twenties. It belongs to the kind of cinema I love: a gaze upon reality that is able to provoke doubt and reflection. I firmly believe in the value of civic and ethical cinema.
Would you like to tell us something about your technical choices?
We shot on an ARRI ALEXA 35 with Leitz Hugo lenses. The film’s stylistic signature is built around static shots and dolly movements; Steadicam is almost entirely absent, except for the final sequence in Via del Corso. We did, however, use the Ronin—for example in the prison scenes or in some rooms of the Quirinale—as well as handheld camera work. These tools were employed in a deliberately non-fluid way, to break the stillness and the supposed calm of institutional environments. As we were saying earlier, we wanted to create small visual ‘shocks’ that would amplify the protagonist’s sense of disturbance. Camera movement thus becomes an intrinsic narrative element: it is doubt creeping in and unsettling the tranquillity of certainties. There is a line in the film, spoken by the character of General Lanfranco Mare, that I find emblematic—I quote from memory: ‘We thought, as men of law and of the State, that law and discipline would protect us from sensitivity. And they did not.’ It is a fundamental passage.
After Andreotti and Berlusconi, in this film Toni Servillo ascends to the Quirinale…
Yes, he becomes an imaginary President, but first and foremost he is a father—an aspect that moved me deeply. Working with Toni Servillo in this role had immense personal significance for me: I had lost my father shortly before filming began. It was a complex but also cathartic challenge. Private life inevitably becomes intertwined with work, and making cinema can take on a therapeutic function. It was a moment of great intensity to be able to rediscover, through Toni’s performance, the image of my father.
TECHNICAL DETAILS
1st Assistant Camera (A): Dario Paolini
2nd Assistant Camera (A): Tonia Forte
Camera B Operator: Alessandro Abate
1st Assistant Camera (B): Alessio Galasso
2nd Assistant Camera (B): Sofia Karakachoff
Video assist: Alessandro Schirru
DIT: Marco Palmieri
Trainee: Bianca Mastroianni , Lorenzo Lamberti
Steadicam Operator: Emiliano Topai
Gaffer: Fabio Policastro
Key Grip: Cristiano Biagioli
ARRI ALEXA 35, sensor mode 4.6K 16:9
Aspect ratio 2.39:1
Lenses: Leitz Hugo, Angenieux EX Zoom
Rental: D-Vision Movie People
Lab: Flat Parioli
Colorist: Andrea Orsini
