- From:The Australian
- August 27, 2011
The Borgias features a stellar cast and lush settings and costumes. Source: Supplied
SO here it finally is: the lush historical series they're calling The Tudors meets The Sopranos, a point underscored by its promo line: "The original crime family".
But it's no sexy period soap opera like The Tudors; The Borgias is graver than you might expect. And it does remind one of The Sopranos: from the start it has the right whiff of corrosive criminality about it, that compulsive aura of a psychopathic family driven to hold on to power regardless of cost. But before you rush to set your recorders, it lacks the unprintable catchphrases, deconstructivist parables, and morbid poetry of David Chase's often mystifying dark series.
Jeremy Irons is the centre of the new serial saga as the Machiavellian Spanish patriarch Rodrigo Borgia, who buys himself the title of Pope Alexander VI in 1492, happily indulging in the crime of simony (the corrupt acquisition of ecclesiastical preferment) and famously propels his brood of children into positions of power. This is a family that will delight in all the crimes committed in their name, including adultery, theft, rape, bribery and murder. In the first episodes you sense the younger members of the family are still learning about evil and have a long way to go, though son Cesare (Francois Arnaud), the family fixer, is obviously overly fond of his 13-year-old sister, Lucrezia (Holliday Grainger). There are already teasing embraces and many sultry assignations between the siblings.
Cesare, also blessed with Machiavellian cunning, has followed his father into the church but is determined to be his own sinning man in Rome's libidinous night, while his brother, hot-headed military man Juan (David Oakes), will take over the Papal armies. Randy Rodrigo isn't married, but his long-time mistress Vanozza (Joanne Whalley), a former courtesan, is the mother of his children. Unfortunately, when he finally manages to get himself elected Pope, he tells Vanozza he can no longer share her bed, although this doesn't stop him from taking on a new, younger mistress named Guilia Farnese (Lotte Verbeek).
She's the ravishing temptress who comes to the Pope seeking redemption and ends up in his bed. Giulia quickly uses her new vaunted position to amass power and influence of her own. She befriends Lucrezia and shares her opinions with the Pope, thereby alienating Vanozza and driving a wedge straight through the heart of the Borgia family.
Jordan turns the history book into a lively novel of depravities -- which smacks of a believable world, as it turns out -- in a gob-smacking display of film-making. That's so, even if the early episodes suffer from the fatiguing problems of context setting, character establishment and the putting in motion of several narratives that may take episodes to pay off. But that's the nature of this style of long-form story-telling that cable TV in the US has developed into a new art form with shows such as The Wire, Deadwood, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Sons of Anarchy and Boardwalk Empire.
It's a form that is increasingly attracting filmmakers such as Jordan and Martin Scorsese, who once disdained TV as meretricious, an enemy of cinematic art. The reality is that the traditional relationship between cinema and TV has reversed in recent years. American movies have become conservative and cautious while these long-form scripted series, on both broadcast networks and cable stations, have become more daring, topical and willing to risk offending.
Jordan says until this series he had never considered TV as a story-telling medium, but the epic narrative of the real-life Borgias was just too intricate, and crammed with too much emotional detail, to be filled into even a two-hour movie. He kept at it though, writing and rewriting scripts that almost starred Viggo Mortensen and Christina Ricci; then Colin Farrell and Scarlett Johansson. He says he never really nailed it, even though he had managed to produce Michael Collins, his epic film about the Irish war of independence. "The canvas of a movie, in a way, is almost too tight for that kind of historical examination," he said at one point.
Then Canada's largest broadcaster CTV, US cable network Showtime and Toronto-based Take 5 Productions proposed The Borgias as a four-year, 40-hour miniseries. The Tudors, the Canadian-produced Showtime historical fiction series, had proved that a TV costume epic could be embraced by a modern audience, regardless of historical accuracy, so long as it was sexy and entertaining.
"The minute I began to think about that, it made absolute sense for this project to do it as a big, expanded 40-hour movie," Jordan says. "The truth is that there is kind of a new medium happening in television at the moment: the stage play as series. The film business has become so difficult and intractable that a lot of directors like me are gladly working in this medium." He made the right decision. When the series launched in the US in April it was the Showtime network's highest rating drama premiere in seven years, and out-performed the highest ratings season of The Tudors.
It is very entertaining, skilfully acted and superbly realised in production terms, though you do need to settle in and let it grow on you. It also lacks the Byzantine plotting of The Sopranos, in the sense that initially you presume where The Borgias is heading -- something Jordan has admitted is a problem, prompting him to promise many surprises down the line.
Even without knowing the history, it's reasonably easy to anticipate the show's initial direction, given the transparencies of the leading characters' intentions. A bedridden Pope Innocent VIII breathes his last words to the gathered cardinals with heavy regret: "We have all sullied the church with our greed and lechery," he barely whispers. "Which of you will wash it clean?" We know Rodrigo desperately wants power, that he lusts for it, and that all the others in the Pope's bedroom will be out to thwart him -- especially the evil-looking cardinal Giuliano della Rovere (a superbly slippery performance from Canadian actor Colm Feore). If a trifle predictable, the intrigue and treachery is highly enjoyable in its own right, given the sheer delight with which it's played by the actors, all swishing red robes and tortured whispers and classical theatre intonations.
There is a lot of setting up in the first episodes and Jordan simply doesn't have the time to take the risks that Chase did in The Sopranos. There aren't the bad jokes, the retrograde humour that characterises Chase's writing, the way he was brave enough to sometimes go for the gags rather than the story. The Borgias is unrelenting in establishing itself; Jordan is determined that we understand his world.
The Sopranos juxtaposed the angst of middle-class family life with the psychopathology of the mob family, the latter bringing the former into a kind of wonderful, and often comic, dramatic relief. There are few laughs in The Borgias.
It does, though, share with that other great saga of family succession, The Godfather, the sense that violent actions are presented to us as morally necessitated by the endemic corruption and brutality of a fundamentally unjust society. And like The Godfather, there is a well-developed sense of dynastic gangsterism, an empire being forged that's fiercely protective of family feeling, fratricide their prerogative.
Irons is wonderful in this role, somehow assimilated by the part he plays. His once almost pretty face retains a foxy chiselled look these days, constructed of taut planes that he arranges into sharpness when his eyes find their target.
Normally they register irony as if to conceal the interior dramas, especially in the wonderfully involving scenes where the new Pope is elected, played with masterly technique. We believe he is actually thinking the words he says, creating them, not simply reciting them.
He's so vocally strong, his caramelly voice choreographing itself into deliberate stanzas, sometimes unexpected in pitch, often surprising in mood with teasing phrasing. He does those actorly things English character performers do so well: the sighs, shuffles, odd leans, the looks away when you expect him to make eye contact. As each scene finishes, you can't help but replay it in your mind, each shuffle, frown, baring of teeth, sigh and beautifully weighted sentence.
The Borgias is worth watching for Irons alone; but then you might look, too, for the costumes designed by veteran Gabriella Pescucci, also responsible for Martin Scorsese's The Age of Innocence. They are so beautifully constructed you sometimes want the camera to slow down a little so you can simply appreciate the craftsmanship.
Then there's Paul Sarossy's equally sumptuous photography which juxtaposes huge, subjective close-ups, often maintained for entire sequences, with wonderfully constructed shots that offer a kind of homage to high Renaissance painterliness. His lighting burnishes each scene as though a light lacquer has been applied to a painting; at times you look closely as if to see the slight crackling on the surface.
AS has been well documented and much debated over the past fortnight, the dismantling of the old entrenched ABC continues as outsourcing increasingly becomes the norm, but it's simply wrong to suggest dedicated arts programming is about to disappear from its schedule.
The national broadcaster has axed several shows including The New Inventors, Art Nation and Collectors, all finishing after their current seasons, which does seem to be a pity, though apparently Collectors is only going to be "rested". I'll miss them all.
Like the more exuberant Q&A and The Gruen Transfer, The New Inventors is one of those modest programs that not only represent their time but dissect, dismantle and deconstruct the period in which they are broadcast. The New Inventors often wittily discusses new designs but also debates with and informs us about contemporary ideas of health and efficiency.
It's always surprising to watch the sort of show you would only see on the ABC. Collectors is such a thing. Expertly produced and stylishly directed, the series in its rather cool way touches on many ideas to do with the psychology of collecting and the politics of taste. The show is popular because it's a gorgeously presented expression of the human capacity to categorise objects. So many of us do it and Collectors offers reassurance that while hoarding objects can be a soothing and reassuring escape from anxieties, barely skirting the problems of addiction in many cases, it's not necessarily an escape from life itself.
Art Nation I'll miss too, a sad reminder of the disheartening regularity with which such programs come and go, but it was hardly compulsory viewing. We tend to be impatient with ABC arts programming though the public broadcaster is the only free-to-air network interested in creating a diverse slate of shows that deal with culture, whether high or low. But the broadcaster's news and current affairs coverage of arts is superficial and sporadic, lacking critical depth. Sport is a fixed and highly prominent element in ABC schedules, as are religion, media analysis and finance. Arts coverage, though, so thankless in terms of market pull, is limited or largely defined in terms of popular entertainment. Why is there no space in prime-time news for affirming the role of the arts in our social, intellectual and political life?
But regardless of some recent sanctimonious bleating, it's hardly all doom and gloom in arts programming. This debate has lost sight of the art-focused films, both commissioned and acquired, soon to premiere in prime time across ABC1 & ABC2, such as Bob Connolly's and Sophie Raymond's observational feature Mrs Carey's Concert, or Life in Movement, the acclaimed local feature documentary about 29-year-old choreographer Tanja Liedtke, and On Borrowed Time, the loving portrait of Chad Morgan that premiered at the Sydney Film Festival.
And detractors have simply failed to mention the unmissable Artscape, the home of ABC TV's distinctive half-hour arts programs, which happily is still with us. It's a favourite of mine. It includes the series Artists at Work; In Conversation; The Art Life, Not Quite Art, Anatomy, and the latest ABC and independent arts documentaries.
The recent In Conversation interviews the chatty and informed Virginia Trioli conducted with Bryan Ferry, Marianne Faithfull and Annie Leibovitz were a delight. So too is Tuesday night's documentary movie Stunt Love, nicely written and directed by Matthew Bate, and developed with the South Australian Film Corporation and the Adelaide Film Festival. This is almost literally a knock-out, being the story of Australia's J.P. "Jack" McGowan and his on-screen daredevil wife, stuntwoman Helen Holmes, an epic romance about one of Hollywood's first stunt directors set against the birth of cinema.
I saw the first 10 minutes of the first pilot episode on an Italian channel and ... then I had to stop. Just like the Tudors. I did better in that case, I saw the first series. I love period drama but ... I prefer British series. Rome, The Tudors, The Borgias are ... kind of lush shows that I simply am not interested in. Pity. Jeremy Irons is such a great actor! By the way, he was not in the first 10 minutes, wasn't he? By the way 2, I live in the Borgias' land, with a Borgias' Fortress topping my small ancient town , I'm suposed to be interested but ... they will forgive me if I don't watch this series.I hope.
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