Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Benito Mussolini is standing on a stage, taking in the cheers of a room full of boisterous men, when he suddenly turns round and looks straight at us. \u201cYou\u2019ll love me too,\u201d he declares with a smirk. \u201cYou\u2019ll become fascists too.\u201dSo begins Mussolini: Son of the Century, a bracingly unconventional drama charting the ascent of Italy\u2019s fascist movement in the early 1920s. Adapted from the first book in Antonio Scurati\u2019s titular tetralogy, the eight-part series is not so much a recap of history as an immersion in a time and place. It is also less a biography than an uncomfortably intimate encounter with the man himself. He confides in us directly as if we were there with him, present and complicit, as he rises from rabble-rousing newspaper editor to Il Duce. This daring, provocative approach comes from director Joe Wright, who showed little taste for either in period dramas such as Pride & Prejudice and Atonement or his 2017 Winston Churchill biopic Darkest Hour.Where the latter was a sentimental ode to heroism, Son of the Century is a complex portrait of evil. It draws on everything from Futurist art, the cinema of Federico Fellini and Paolo Sorrentino and techno. If that sounds incongruous on the page, it is utterly electrifying on the screen.So too is series lead Luca Marinelli, uncanny as Mussolini with his jutting jaw, simian posture and resonant voice. He not only captures the strongman\u2019s imposing physicality and rhetorical power, but peels back the layers to reveal the anatomy of Mussolini\u2019s monstrous machismo \u2014 his insecurities and the personal frustrations he violently avenged.The series also strives to show how and why he was able to seduce millions. While there are plenty of scenes of impassioned rallies and image building, it\u2019s the little asides to camera that really give us a sense of what those \u201clost people\u201d who were swept up by him felt: that he was speaking to them directly, involving them in his triumphs. This meta component also reinforces the image of Mussolini as a protean actor who got where he did by turning the political arena into a theatre and casting himself as its star. We see him adopt various guises: agitator, orator, statesman, savage. He is, we are told: \u201cEverything and the opposite of everything.\u201d And so, whenever strategy fails him (as it often does), we see him turn to stagecraft \u2014 most notably in October 1922 when he orders the Blackshirts (his thuggish private militia) to march on Rome despite knowing full well that they have no chance against the state army. The bluff works, the king and creaking government flinch and, at 39, Mussolini, the son of a socialist blacksmith, is appointed leader. Just three years earlier in the 1919 election, his fascists had failed to secure a single seat. It hardly needs saying that another populist demagogue, newly returned to power, looms large over this series, even before Mussolini vows to \u201cmake Italy great again\u201d. How quickly democracy can be dismantled, Son of the Century warns. \u2605\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2605Sky Atlantic from February 4 at 9pm. Streaming in full on Now from the same day<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Benito Mussolini is standing on a stage, taking in the cheers of a room full of boisterous men, when he suddenly turns round and looks straight<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":191414,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-191413","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191413"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191413\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":191415,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191413\/revisions\/191415"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/191414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}