The Master – The review

Summer, late eighties. After years of hard training and strict rules, Felice (Tiziano Menichelli), thirteen years old and carrying all his father’s expectations on his shoulders, finally arrives to face the national tennis tournaments. To best prepare him, the parent (Giovanni Ludeno) relies on the self-styled ex-champion Raul Gatti (Pierfrancesco Favino), who even boasts a round of 16 final at the Foro Italico in his meteoric but impressive career. From game to game, the two begin a journey along the Italian coast, which among defeats, lies and bizarre encounters will lead Felice to discover the taste of freedom and Raul to glimpse the possibility of a new beginning. An unexpected, deep, unrepeatable bond is born between the two. Like certain summers, which come only once and never come back.

A true story, or almost

This is the fourth film for Di Stefano, someone who over the years has shown that he is not afraid to get his hands dirty. And in this his 2014 directorial debut speaks clearly – and well: Escobarthat is, dressing a giant of contemporary cinema like Benicio del Toro in the character role of the Colombian trafficker of the same name, and then narrating his figure, by extension, through the love between his niece, Maria (Claudia Traisac), and the Canadian with a passion for surfing, Nick (Josh Hutcherson). Eleven years – and with the engaging but little celebrated in between The Informer – After, Di Stefano goes beyond the genre reinterpretations that have characterized his directorial excursus to create his most canonical and simple film in structural terms as only a great classic like the road movie can be, recalibrated in the form of a sports-style coming-of-age story, but paradoxically more personal. Because, and in this the dedication at the beginning of the story speaks clearly, it is to his own father that Di Stefano addresses himself.

And with him to those indicated in the director’s notes as: “The imperfect mentors, wounded but full of heart”. A true story, therefore, but with the necessary license, so as to become a universal parable on life and its pain through the magic of cinema. And this is precisely Di Stefano’s trademark, because in the manner of The last night of Love who used the neo-noir frame to tell about men on the edge put to the limit by life and choices made tragic by chance, the same happens in The Masteralbeit in different shapes and tones. Sometimes comical, sometimes dramatic, but always with an underlying sweetness that makes the vision engaging and emotional throughout its almost two-hour duration at a measured pace, Di Stefano’s is an ode to the beauty of human bonds which reminds us, first of all, that no man is and can be an island, even if he would like it with all his being.

Life around a tennis court

In this, tennis is a congenial element to the story, because it is a battle of ingenuity and strength between two islands moving along the playing field, with a single strip of net separating the parts. It’s the attitude on the pitch that makes the difference. Especially then when Di Stefano uses it to enrich not only the character component of his stage agents, but also the conflict in its entirety in telling the story of the reasoned tennis that plays from the throw-in of his engineer father, and the aggressive, attacking one, which shortens the court and strikes first of the ex-champion Gatti. That is to say two different and dichotomous ways of living and making choices which, in the long run, shape diametrically opposed personalities as evidenced by the chaotic and always precarious evolution of the very young Felice of the talented Menichelli, whose internal conflict takes little to manifest externally. It is, however, with Gatti’s character dimension of a Favino star performer and incomparable leader, that the critical discourse around The Master it intensifies more and more.

Because he is an indomitable soul, Gatti, yet fragile, broken, anesthetized by life to the point of being rendered completely harmless by blows that would have destroyed anyone. Not him, however, who even when the darkness seems to have completely enveloped him, dragging him into the oblivion of his dark side made up of fears, failures and missed opportunities, still manages to deflect its destructive scope behind a mask made of a sparkling smile and strategic sunglasses. “Life smiles at me” he says every day, in the morning, after getting out of bed, knowing full well, however, that the world out there is ready to pounce on you at the first false step.

The meeting with Felice will change him forever, giving him renewed enthusiasm with which to look forward to a horizon whose future, Di Stefano, leaves to the unknown of the darkness of the closing credits, but the same can also be said for the young and melancholy Felice: this time in name and in fact.

The Maestro will be available in cinemas from November 13th.