Toni Servillo in Paolo Sorrentino Character Study

The first thing to be said about Paolo Sorrentino’s captivating portrait of an esteemed political leader in the waning days of his term is that Toni Servillo really is some kind of marvel. The great theater actor who transitioned into film with instant command has been a talismanic presence in the director’s work since his 2001 debut. Sorrentino hands him a jewel of a role in Mariano De Santis, a fictional president of the Italian Republic who describes himself as “a gray, boring man, a man of the law,” instead revealed to be a wellspring of deep feeling, humanity and — to his own surprise — doubt.

Sorrentino depicted disgraced real-life Italian politician Giulio Andreotti, again played by Servillo, in 2009’s Il Divo. The right-leaning seven-time prime minister allegedly linked to countless political assassinations, faked suicides and kickbacks that fed his Christian Democratic party’s decades-long stranglehold on government received operatic treatment, splashed with bold directorial strokes that recalled Fellini, Scorsese and Coppola.

With La Grazia, Sorrentino makes the almost radical and these days original choice of imagining a basically honest man of integrity, fiercely intelligent and principled but quietly needled by ethical uncertainties over choices he faces during his final days in office, along with complicated personal history. The absence of corruption, scandal, self-dealing and cronyism makes this a revitalizing break from real-world concerns, without in any way veering into sappy idealism. The reflections on power, influence and the weight of the past are unquestionably relevant.

By the director’s standards, this is a sober and distinctly mature film, centered by the unwavering composure of Servillo’s De Santis. But it’s not without the customary creative arias, the witty humor and visual delights that have distinguished Sorrentino’s best work.

Incongruously accompanied by a pumping techno beat (like a tennis match from Challengers), opening screen text outlines some of the responsibilities of an Italian president. Those include promulgating legislation, appointing state officials, presiding over the High Council of the Judiciary, granting pardons, commuting sentences and bestowing honors.

De Santis’ countenance is generally as unyielding as the historic Palazzo del Quirinale, the official residence of Italian presidents, its elegant exterior concealing majestic halls, grand staircases, a vast chapel and an arcaded courtyard. But Servillo’s characterization allows for subtle hints of the man’s vanity — like an almost imperceptible flicker in his eyes as yet another fawning politician praises his ability to endure six government crises and turn the country around from the disastrous state it was left in by the previous, imbecilic administration. He seems unsure whether to be tickled or bruised when he discovers his nickname is “Reinforced Concrete.”

With just six months left in his term, the former judge’s duties have decelerated to the point where one of the proposed items on his daily calendar is an interview with the editor of Vogue Italia about his sartorial choices.

But three pressing matters occupy thick folders on his desk. One is a law to legalize euthanasia, which has wide support, including from his daughter Dorotea (Anna Ferzetti), a formidable jurisprudence scholar herself. “If I don’t sign, I’m a torturer. If I sign, I’m a murderer,” says De Santis, anticipating the public outcry.

The others are requests for pardons, one for Cristiano Arpa (Vasco Mirandola), a history teacher beloved by generations of students in his town, who killed his wife when she reached the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s. The other is Isa Rocca (Linda Messerklinger), a young woman convicted of murdering her husband in his sleep. Rocca’s name was put forward by Mariano’s lifelong friend Ugo (Massimo Venturiello), who is angling to succeed him as president. With full disclosure, he informs De Santis that Rocca is the niece of his current partner, though the circumstances of her case merit closer examination.

Sorrentino’s script cleverly ponders the difference between the truth absorbed up close and the law, which is viewed from a distance. This question becomes thornier once Dorotea visits Rocca in prison, finding her rude and abrasive though not irrational. But when the condemned woman perceptively evaluates her, informing the government representative that she’s living without breathing, Dorotea rethinks her choice to put her personal life on hold to take care of her father. She envies the freedom of her brother Riccardo (Francesco Martino), a successful pop music composer living in Montreal.

The film is punctuated by poignant moments of reflection in which Mariano sneaks cigarettes (vetoed by Dorotea, who also enforces a health-conscious diet) on the Quirinale roof, while sharing confidences with Colonel Labaro (Orlando Cinque), his cuirassier, the elite cavalry regiment that serves as the president’s guards. Gifted cinematographer Daria D’Antonio, who has captured the sumptuous visuals of Sorrentino’s last three features, shoots these scenes against the twinkling lights of Rome at night, making Mario seem like he’s in another dimension.

Other introspective angles are explored during Mariano’s audiences with his friend the Pope (Rufin Doh Zeyenouin), a serene Black man with a head crowned by a bundle of silver dreads, who tools around the Vatican on a motorbike. Mariano confesses his loneliness since his adored wife Aurora’s passing eight years ago. The Pope doesn’t offer false words of pious comfort, instead telling the politician that his life has become weighted down when what he wants is “leggerezza,” or lightness.

The film increasingly becomes a story about love as Mariano thinks back on his first encounters with Aurora decades earlier in the rural environs outside Naples. But any solace to be gained from those memories is polluted by a transgression he has spent 40 years trying to get over. She was unfaithful though never revealed the identity of her lover. Mariano is convinced it was Ugo, who responds with indignant disbelief when accused. Only Coco Valori (Milvia Marigliano) knows the truth but for now remains tight-lipped.

Coco is a spectacular character, another old school friend and confidante of Mariano’s, whose first scene is a low-key comic tour de force. An art critic who doesn’t dispute the legend that she was metaphysical surrealist De Chirico’s lover at 21, she turns up for dinner at the palazzo in her outsize glasses and chunky jewelry, talking nonstop about the pitiful state of Italy’s art world and museums until she gets a look at the meager portion of fish being served and exits to hit a more lavish dinner.

Marigliano makes Coco a blazing force of nature who gets one of the movie’s most emotional scenes, late in the story, not to mention its hilarious closing line during the credits. There are also beautifully observed moments toward the end with Dorotea and Riccardo; and a moving reckoning with death when Mariano’s favorite horse, a stallion named Elvis, is felled by illness and the president refuses to end his suffering by having the animal put to sleep.

That might seem heavy-handed in a drama in which euthanasia is a key political issue on the table, but Sorrentino and Servillo dignify those scenes, further humanizing De Santis.

One of the most unexpected sequences — pulled off with aplomb by Servillo — occurs after Mariano develops an interest in a song by Italian rapper Cosimo Fini, who records as Guè, while the president responds more emotionally to a live feed of an astronaut floating around in zero gravity in his space vessel, shedding a single weightless tear. That scene has a gorgeous echo in the closing moments, playfully encapsulating something for which Mariano has been searching.

Perhaps Sorrentino’s wildest flourish is a sobering moment in which De Santis ponders his advancing age, standing bolt upright and expressionless in the Quirinale courtyard as the very elderly president of Portugal arrives for a State visit, stepping out of his car into a sudden downpour that whips up the drenched red carpet like a ribbon in the wind. “Am I that old?” De Santis quietly asks Labaro, while watching his distinguished guest get crumpled by the elements.

The beauty of the script is the way the turbulent thoughts of De Santis’ past, or even seemingly banal events from his present, like that Vogue interview — directly or indirectly — feed into his most important final responsibilities and his state of mind as he steps away from his seat of power.

The director marks that momentous departure accordingly, with a kind of procession down Rome’s ritziest shopping street, Via dei Condotti, lined with luxury boutiques and admiring onlookers. Any solemnity that might be engendered by the president accompanied by an official entourage to his private residence near the Spanish Steps is amusingly offset by the robot law enforcement dog leading the way.

As always with the director, the level of craftsmanship is dazzling. La Grazia is a visually luxuriant film with a highly seductive sheen, but it’s the movie’s warmth and emotion, its spirit of forgiveness, understanding and hard-won wisdom that creeps up on you. Or to borrow from the title, its grace, a word used in Italian also for official pardons. Servillo communicates the ways in which Mariano — a fantasy figure in our broken world — acquires grace via the most economical means. It stands among the estimable actor’s greatest performances.