Italy is at a bad turn not because of Berlusconi’s resilience, not for the predicted immigration waves, not for youth unemployment, not for the cuts in jobs and the fall of the small enterprise and not even for the crunching grips of austere economic reforms. Italy is like a patient in depression, looking at himself in the mirror and understanding of being depressed, but unable to think in any other terms than depression. The Italian problem is a problem of imagination. It is a problem of lack of alternative imagination. The imagination of the ideals, of ethics and values, usually triggered by both Realpolitik and theater plays, have all been eaten up by a reinforcing black hole where Berlusconi and his pro and contra commentators have collided. The game is no more Berlusconi’s or the magistrates’. The game is this sort of self-fulfilling prophecy, where critiques are self-evident and foster the things they critique. The lack of imagination has produced a Berlusca-centric system that reduced Italy to a thing and a measure of itself, at this stage devoid of a guide.

Silvio Forever comes about in these uni-versal days. An intelligent movie, a sharp, well-informed, poignant, revelatory and (un)surprisingly wit collage of footage and declarations. A movie that would shake a foreigner more than an Italian. As in any addiction, excess of consumption decreases the effect of every amount: an evening in the cinema to watch Berlusconi’s shows simply reinforces uni-directionality. In actual facts, this movie should be destined to a foreign audience, where alternative imaginations could make a cult out of this deeply enmeshed in the Italian-style, but incredibly actual and pan-communicative film.

Silvio Forever is the story of the effects of power and transgression, from the moment the man believes to be the creator, to the moment the man has to blindly obey to his creation. It is a universal parable, telling the story of a country internationally considered a-normal on daily basis, a story that surely will provoke a deep sense of resentment in any one caring about Italy. Also, it is story that speaks the words of truth, a truth contained in the Pandora’s box of liberal theory, which can paradoxically become an instrument of invisible censorship, of self-destructive implosion, of obliteration of democracy through democracy.

Gian Antonio Stella and Sergio Rizzo, together with Roberto Faenza, acted somehow predictably, as they produced a movie not able to increase the audience already conquered with the books “La Casta” and “La Deriva”, and that slice of population barricaded behind the parallel reality of investigative journalism, the magistrate’s justice and deep “anti-berlusconismo”. Similarly, the three acted very unpredictably too, fact epitomised by the Left’s caustic reactions to the movie. What was different? The movie’s sobriety and ambiguous nature are of rarely paralleled manufacture in Italian docudrama: Silvio Forever could have easily been about a distant autocrat, both in time and space.

In addition to that, the editing of the movie was about one possible alternative for Italy: the lack of an orienting voice, if we consider Silvio’s voice as ‘within’ the narrative and not as the ‘narrating voice’. The movie has met unconscious, deep audience’s dissatisfaction by the fact that there is no clear moral, as the stark contrast between Rosa Bossi Berlusconi’s (Silvio’s mother) declarations and their dismissal by the unfolding of history, or the juxtaposition of a 1910s betrayal of Caesar movie and the fairy-tale like tone of the ending song are elements framing the nebulous state of the Italian real. The movie’s cynical, witty and ambiguous alternative style smells of the unknown Italy, of a country brave enough to completely dismiss itself and build a new cosmos: possibly, it smells of the non-televised alternative country. Silvio Forever deserves to be the last act of a play where all Italians are unconsciously playing, as it feels like that not only there is no light at the end of the tunnel, but that the tunnel is not even felt. Nevertheless, the few subjects still gravitating around the imaginative black hole are wondering how to escape the aggrandising magnetism. And they also feel that they cannot do it through neither the large or the small screen.

A clear example of this conundrum can be found with a comparison between the overused English word “nice” and its Italian pseudo-counterpart, drugstore “bello/bella”. A comparative observation of the two words puts forward a key of analysis that allows us to draw some cross-cultural lines between Anglophones and Italians.

My first encounter with the word ‘nice’ happened during a daily conversation with the regulars while working as a barman in a North London pub. When speaking about Italy, sovaldi one of the crowd, kept on emphasising how “nice” the country was. It soon became clear to me that there was much more to the word than a mere aesthetic connotation, as my Italian brain was naturally inclined to think. One could of course argue that pub regulars in general do not excel in linguistic variation but I believe that the incidence of the word ‘nice’ is high and that it generally expresses many meanings.

‘Nice’ is all-embracing. It has a wide semantic adaptability which is not paralleled by its Italian counterpart: the use of the former stretches from aesthetic to ethical terms, since it can be referred quite unambiguously to places, people, animals, or situations. The latter, on the other hand, has a rather more fixed meaning, which is usually due to its aesthetic connotations. Nevertheless, ‘bello/bella’ acquires further meanings that are directly linked to the word’s aesthetic sense, which is always maintained regardless of the context in which the word is applied.

The English ‘nice’ is strongly contextual. ‘Nice’ goes equally well with ‘guy’, ‘exhibition’ or ‘pie and mash’. It does not necessarily imply an aesthetic or moral value: its acceptation depends on the context. Pub regulars emphasized the natural beauty of my region by overusing the word ‘nice’, which was better understood standing for both natural and social ‘niceness’. Pub regulars were directly correlating natural to social features, thus manifesting their view on Italy’s knowingly stereotyped lifestyle.

In other words, the English use of ‘nice’ implies an overreaching ‘niceness’. Its use is highly contextual and in this specific case, implies that natural and social ‘beauty’ are strictly interwoven.

Basically, what is pleasant to the eye is also pleasant to your social life.

The term ‘bello’ has, however, a preponderant aesthetic value in the Italian language, since it somehow transcends moral judgement. What is ‘bello’ in Italian is not necessarily good. More importantly, if something in Italian is ‘bello’, it automatically becomes morally pleasant too. What is nice is nice, full stop. Apparently it is a contorted concept, but it clearly comes from the classicist tradition, which appointed beauty the role of moral healer.

I was once talking with a friend on Lake Como banks about  his views on the problems of private and public social consciousness in the region. Despite his total dismay and his thoughts on moving somewhere else, he stated in no uncertain terms that he would never leave just because of the natural beauty by which he was surrounded. As if natural ‘niceness’ could compete with more practical interferences in private and public life.

So, if you are still with me, the Italian ‘bello’ becomes in its turn paradoxically all-embracing, the moral value being originated by the aesthetic starting point.

It seems that the old story repeats itself in various forms: the continental deductive method on the one side, the Anglophone inductive quest on the other.

But it is not negligible that these two simple words, ‘nice’ and ‘bello’, offer us delightful insights to understand two different cultural traditions. Through this linguistic lens, it comes easier to comprehend for instance what is the English collective imaginary on exotic, remote lands and how that is reflected in social dynamics (see colonialism); or, why should Italians consider voting for a Prime Minister which undoubtedly possesses populist ‘niceness’, although lacking in political and legal transparency.