Joe Wright has directed some of the most famous romantic period dramas of our time. His creative partnership with Keira Knightley brought us a new definitive Jane Austen adaptation with 2005’s Pride and Prejudice, a crushing classic with Atonement, and a devastating epic with Anna Karenina. All of these films examine high-society social structures in specific historical time periods. Later years in Wright’s career delivered an Oscar-winning turn from Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour, a World War II drama. Now, Wright’s latest book-to-screen adaptation/period drama goes back in time to the origins of fascism in Italy.
Mussolini: Son of the Century stars Luca Marinelli as the titular Benito Mussolini. The series is a portrait of Mussolini and his political rise, from the foundations of Italian fascism to the imposition of the most ferocious dictatorship Italy has ever known. The series debuted at the Venice Film Festival in 2024 and earlier this year on Sky in the U.K. Mubi is releasing the eight-part limited series for American audiences. The first episode premiered on Wednesday, September 10, on the streamer, with new episodes coming out weekly.
Wright and Marinelli’s take on the character is dangerously charismatic. Through frequent fourth-wall breaking, Mussolini looks the viewers right in the eye and tells them from the show’s very first moments that he’ll turn them into fascists and make them love it. Wright wants his audience to be seduced by this depiction of Mussolini, he tells TV Insider in the video interview above, to show how easy it can be to be charmed by a charismatic political figure even when you know you don’t align with their views. Then, the rug gets pulled out from underneath you in the aftermath of your complicity. Wright “very much” sees Son of the Century as a warning for our modern times, and he uses modern elements to make the early 20th century feel familiar.
The British director previously described the style of the Mubi series as “a mashup of Scarface, Man With a Movie Camera, and ’90s rave culture,” per The Guardian. Wright tells us how he landed on this concept.
“When I was researching the Italian cultural life of the times, one came up against futurism, which was a very powerful movement, creative movement, painting, sculpture, poetry,” Wright says above. “It was all about momentum and the mechanization of war with the First World War — they were kind of traumatized by that — and the mechanization of modern life. It was all about trying to capture that energy and that kinetic energy. I wanted a contemporary audience to really experience that.”
“A car in those times would’ve gone about 30 miles an hour. It’s not going to give you the same experience,” he continues. “And likewise, with the music, the music would feel old fashioned now. What I was trying to convey was the modernity that they all felt. So to use the Chemical Brothers music felt like an opportunity to give the audience a sense of what it must have been like at the time to be there.”
“Breaking the fourth wall, the music, there’s lots of modern techniques that I hope reach through the screen and into people’s living rooms and into people’s current lives,” Wright adds.
Wright was drawn to Mussolini as a way to educate himself “on the roots and foundations of fascism,” he says. “I felt that I’d, the culture had trivialized the word and it’d almost become comic. And then with the reemergence of far-right populism, I felt that it was my responsibility to try and understand what it was and where it came from.”
The series arrives as fascism is on the rise globally and in the United States. “I’m actually heartbroken that it is coming out in the world that it’s coming out in,” Wright admits, “but the timing is right.”
Learn more about the series and how it fits into Wright’s filmography in the full video interview above.
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