Grace 4K 2025 Ultra HD 2160p

De Santis’s term as President of the Italian Republic is coming to an end, but there is still time to make a few radical decisions—the consequences of which will be left to his successor, while this grand gesture will add a final chapter to the outgoing leader’s legacy. One of the main points of discussion is euthanasia—his daughter Dorotea (Anna Ferzetti) tries to convince her father to sign the bill, but his Catholic heritage dictates the opposite: the Pope is unlikely to bless voluntary departure from life. However, matters of state serve more as a backdrop to the fading of the personal and the masculine: in his own way, the charming and perceptive signore accepts his weakness and the end of a significant stage in his life. The aging man is tormented by a question to which he has been unable to find an answer for 40 years. His late wife, Aurora, had an affair: the widower seems to have forgiven her, but he hasn’t forgotten, and he still wants to know the name of the lover of the woman he mourns every day. 

User Review

It is, in fact, compassion. It seems the great director is already asking for it. Paolo Sorrentino is far from my favorite filmmaker. He’s far too derivative. Fellini’s shadow looms over him, threatening to swallow him whole every time. Yet how beautifully he follows in the footsteps of his predecessors. It is as beautiful as Italy itself—its opera, its people, its sea, its cuisine, its temperament. Even if all his philosophizing on screen often hides quite banal truths, that doesn’t make them any less true, nor his films any less therapeutic.

With *Grazia*—let’s call it that—everything took a strange turn. Everything seems the same, yet it isn’t. I never thought I’d say this about Sorrentino’s work: how boring it is, even dreary. Actually, just like the protagonist himself, who is, in his own right, a rather extraordinary figure.

Italian President Mariano de Santis is finishing out his final days in office. He is a great jurist and a successful leader. The people love him, his subordinates respect him, his children adore him (his daughter is practically his right-hand woman), but no one really knows him at all. The secretive lawyer doesn’t let anyone get close to him. He performs his duties languidly and dispassionately, sitting in the same magnificent interiors as Toni Servillo’s character (the director’s muse is here with us again) in *The Great Beauty*. They suit him well. Before him lie two requests for clemency, in which “not everything is so clear-cut,” and a draft law on euthanasia. A difficult moral choice he is not at all ready to make. A choice between a murderer and a tormentor. A mountain of “pros” and “cons.” Public outcry, a friend—the Pope, of course, won’t approve (well, that’s his status), a daughter who has dedicated her life to helping her father and drafting this notorious law, a friend with dubious requests. Everything hinges on the protagonist’s single choice, but he doesn’t want to make it.

Human moral dilemmas are as eternal as the sky; they have no resolution and certainly cannot be analyzed. Man is sinful, and any choice he makes is imperfect. However, our hero knows this, of course. He is tired of everything, and only one question torments him: with whom did his wife, who died forty years ago, cheat on him? This is the essence of the imperfect man: he leads the country, is adored by many, is kind, strives for justice, holds life in his hands, yet cannot grant such a simple act of mercy as forgiveness to his beloved, who is already dead.

“In whose hands is the present?”—this question is posed time and again in the film, and the answer is given immediately: in the hands of living, sinful people who know how to grant mercy. The very process of pardoning criminals and enacting laws is a legal, secular, formalized process. However, can mercy in any form be justified, can a protocol for action be issued? Of course not, but we have to. The president tries, but is forced to conclude that one must live by one’s feelings, and preferably in the here and now. Logic is an escape from life. It neither helps nor protects against obsessive thoughts at night and the pain at the end of each day when you smoke your only cigarette. A crime committed out of love and passion can be forgiven.

Everything we love about Paolo Sorrentino is in *Grace*: gentle irony about existence, beautiful, symbolically composed shots, unexpected music that contrasts with the surroundings yet resonates with the characters’ inner worlds, the characters themselves, like museum exhibits of life itself, and even the well-deserved Volpi Cup from the Venice Film Festival for Best Actor (Toni Servillo). Nevertheless, the film feels heavy, as if you were living in that very presidential palace, without fresh air or sunlight. Perhaps Sorrentino began asking such global yet deeply personal questions too soon, or perhaps he himself didn’t believe in the answers he proposed. As long as there are people, the comma in the phrase “you can’t execute, you can’t pardon” will keep shifting.

Info Video

Codec: HEVC / H.265 (57.0 Mb/s)
Resolution: 4K (2160p)
HDR: HDR10
Aspect ratio: 2.39:1

Info Audio

#Italian: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 16-bit)

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