Eternal Visionary (Eterno visionario, 2024) ‘Rome Film Festival’ Movie Review: Pirandello Biopic is Occasionally Forceful and Half-Cohesive

Michele Placido’s “Eternal Visionary” (Eterno visionario) is a sprawling look at legendary playwright Luigi Pirandello’s inner demons. Sweeping through the 1920s and 1930s, the playwright (Fabrizio Bentivoglio) ruminates on his past as fraught personal relationships tumble to the fore.

The film has scale and sweep. But it’s more interested in emotion and interiority, especially mental landscapes as they shift and are affected across a span of time. One may try to be in denial and repress the emotional shadow of certain circumstances but sooner or later, they will catch up. The haunting of the man hews itself all over “Eternal Visionary.” The wounds and guilt are as persistent as the stubborn ego of the artist who pushes for the ‘human sincerity’ in his work to be recognized. He’s almost deluded in several instances.

The film portrays the genius of a man who feels constantly misunderstood by everyone around him. The gulf between his artistry and his personal life seems to stretch continually wider, enveloping him in deferred grief over many relationships not working. On the family front, he struggles lifelong. If he views his wife’s manic disorder as a hurdle that will unfortunately have to be filed aside, his problems don’t really get over. He botches nearly every equation with his children, who drift further and further from him even if they affect a kind, genial demeanor. The cracks will inevitably appear. His relationship with his children is not frosty but rather peppered with a tonne of unresolved, unconfronted hurt.

Misunderstandings and grievances that have been schooled to keep itself muffled will ultimately burst through. The tragedy of the man is his unflagging hope that he will be forgiven and all slights duly overlooked with the passage of time. Yet of course those ghosts of his past linger heavy and unshakably around him always, crashing in on his approach to art. He funnels those into his work, seeking closure which only scandalizes the public.

Eternal Visionary (Eterno visionario, 2024) ‘Rome Film Festival’ Movie Review — A still from “Eternal Visionary” (*Eterno Visionario*, 2024)

However, the film does feel narrow when it intersperses the wife’s madness. The lens it takes to view Antoinetta is constricted. Her projection cannot escape being afflicted by sorrow and unaffirmed identity. She flies into manic fits whenever we encounter her while she’s still in the family folds. On a later reappearance, she invokes only pity. The overwrought one-dimensionality is distracting especially when you consider the massive steps the film takes to sharpen its portrait of Pirandello.

There’s certain confusion that pops up between the humanism it tries to infuse in the artist and the overwhelming degree of narcissism girdling him. An uneasy gap persists, which yields both complex and frustrating ends. You are also left aching for Marta to be more than someone who exudes a charisma that temporarily lifts Pirandello.

All the female characters are struck within the orbit of the great playwright, oozing mostly tragedy. Where are the other shades of their personalities? Vincenti captures the blaze of Marta, her ability to arrest anyone’s attention but the screenplay doesn’t let her be anything else. The playwright’s daughter and her projection too suffer somewhat from this misery lens. The sons don’t even get that much. Neither does the relationship between the artist and his own father. It is a pity.

“Eternal Visionary” could have soared higher if it etched out the supporting characters more sincerely and passionately instead of being wholly besotted with its protagonist, which limits our understanding of the troubled figure. The gaze of the film is too constricted, struggling to situate the strong bent of narcissism in the artist.