La stranezza

In this fictionalised biopic of Luigi Pirandello, Roberto Andò explores the addictive fascination that can lead a writer out of a creative crisis. It opens with the journey made by Pirandello – elegantly played by Toni Servillo – to Sicily. He’s attending the celebration of his mentor’s 80th birthday; however, the return trip is delayed when he has to deal with the funeral of his beloved nanny. Sebastiano and Onofrio, two gravediggers, happen to have an amateur theatre company that provides the comical counterpoint to the serious situations faced by the writer.

Watching the work of this unlikely group of actors, Pirandello lets his imagination loose and is visited by ideas, fantasies and apparitions. Little by little, he comes to find the inspiration for what will become a radical reinvention of the theatre: his magnum opus Six Characters in Search of an Author. La stranezza manages to convey with affection and irony some themes dear to Pirandello – the mysteries of identity and agency, the pull of madness and the irrational, a ghostlike sense of absurdity, and the mixture of fantasy and memory – while offering an accessible, entertaining dive into the universe of one of the great 20th-century writers.

– Cristina Álvarez López