Tina Kakadelis
Joe Wright is known for making things beautiful. He’s the director’s eye behind the 2005 Pride & Prejudice, Atonement, and the wildly underrated Anna Karenina. All these films are adaptations and period pieces with beautiful people in beautiful costumes. There’s an aching longing in Wright’s work that has made him a staple in the genre, but his latest, Mussolini: Son of the Century, sheds all that for a level of nastiness that coats every inch of the frame. Mussolini: Son of the Century is Wright’s ugliest work to date and, given the subject matter, that’s exactly what the series calls for.
Luca Marinelli is unrecognizable as Benito Mussolini in Son of the Century, which is based on Antonio Scurati’s 2018 novel that chronicles Mussolini’s early career. The series begins in 1919 as Mussolini founds the Fasci Italiani, an Italian Fascist party, and ends with the assassination of socialist politician Giacomo Matteotti in 1924. Son of the Century, however, is not your traditional period piece. With a score from Tom Rowlands, one half of the musical group The Chemical Brothers, the series is raucous, rowdy, and, if you can believe it, inspired by ’90s rave culture.
“When I began researching the cultural world around Mussolini, looking at the futurists and all those amazing paintings of dynamism, I really wanted to try and bring that to life for a modern audience,” Wright explains. “I felt that if I used period music, however wild and avant garde the music was for people at the time, it would still feel old-fashioned now. I wanted to convey the modernity of fascism and the surrounding cultural scene.”
When we think of the heart of fascism and Mussolini’s impact on the world, it’s toxic masculinity that plays a major role. Mussolini subscribed to the rigid, violent ideas of manliness that promoted dominance above all else. In Son of the Century, the audience gets to see how Mussolini harnesses this ideology to gain power over Italy. What’s surprising, though, is how much he relies on his mistress, Margherita Sarfatti (Barbara Chichiarelli), to shape the Fascist Party by playing on the insecurities of men.
“At a time when women in Italy were not allowed to vote and had really no social power at all, she was kind of the brains behind a lot of the movement. She was also a great patron of the arts, especially the futurists and Marinetti,” says Wright. “She was an incredibly intellectual woman. I nearly said smart, but that might be misleading. Emotionally, I don’t think she was very smart, but intellectually, certainly.”
“She was the fire underneath him. She also kind of civilized him. She was from the higher echelons of society and he wasn’t. She taught him how to operate in real politics. Eventually, he betrayed her. He betrayed everyone, himself included,” continues Wright. “She ultimately had to escape. The irony is that she was Jewish as well, a tragic irony. I think there was a lot of bitterness and resentment in her, but also a desire for an almost intellectual game. She had little interest in the consequences of her actions for people’s real lives.”
Mussolini became known for intrinsically tying together fascism and violence. In one of the episodes of Son of the Century, Mussolini explains that there’s a difference between gratuitous and calculated violence when it comes to proving a point. A similar differential exists for filmmakers who incorporate violence into their work. If every scene of a film or TV series features an explosive moment of brutality, then it would lose its power because the viewer becomes desensitized. In that way, Mussolini’s understanding of violence mirrors that of those retelling his story.
“We were making this show for a global audience, sure, but we were also very much making it for an Italian audience. There was no accountability after the war. There were no Nuremberg Trials or truth and reconciliation. The whole fascist period was kind of swept under the carpet. Loyalties simmered,” Wright comments. “It’s incredible the amount of people I spoke to in Italy who would say, well, Mussolini wasn’t so bad, he got the trains running on time. They seem to have forgotten the level of violence that was involved in his rise to power and dictatorship.”
“It felt really important to make sure that was understood by the Italian audience and then also by the global audience. People had a very different perception of violence at that time. Violence was almost seen as a kind of cleansing force.”
When Wright mentions the Italian and European audiences, it’s important to note that Son of the Century arrived at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival without distribution for the United States. It wasn’t until May of 2025 that Mubi picked up the rights for the United States and a handful of other countries. In the United States, and around the world, we are seeing a rise of far-right ideologies, not unlike the ones espoused by Mussolini, that value dominance and brutality above all else. It’s always been about power and doing anything to grasp it.
“Because of what’s happening around the world now with the rise of far right extremism and populism, I think we’re all in this together. It’s unfortunately extremely relevant to all of us. It’s not just happening in America or Italy. It’s happening everywhere,” Wright emphatically states. “The reaction I saw at TIFF was very powerful, but then also the reaction of trying to find a distributor in America was really interesting.”
“One streaming service, probably one of the biggest streaming services, said, oh, we love the show, we think it’s brilliant, it’s great, but it’s too controversial for us,” Wright goes on. “The idea that a piece of anti-fascist entertainment is now considered controversial…it’s kind of shocking. Especially when you think about the fact that our grandparents or our great-grandparents, many of them died fighting fascism. And now, somehow, to be anti-fascist is considered controversial.”
