Don't expect any war action here despite the cover of the disc case which shows the putative Mussolini in jackboots with warplanes overhead in the background. This is the story of a young Mussolini, a dedicated socialist and pacifist, and his descent into unbridled egotism and corruption.
This movie made me brood over the irony of a great ideology and movement put forth by noble-minded men like Proudhon and Engels which nevertheless became the spawning ground of selfish egotists like Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini. While espousing the international brotherhood of men and social equality, socialism was diverted by men like these into the monstrous ideologies of Nazism, Fascism and atheistic Communism. There, I think lies the fault - in the atheistic cosmology formulated through dialectical materialism wedded by Marx into socialist ideology. With subsequent discoveries in quantum physics, it can be said that a universe viewed through a materialistic cosmology (based on a misunderstanding of "matter") has not only become passé but untenable. After all, we now know that matter in its traditional definition is equatable to energy; that our perception of matter as solid, liquid or gas is merely a function of our senses as it perceives the force fields generated by atomic structures; that the universe as we can now perceive it with our instruments is made up largely of "dark matter" (96%) about which we know almost nothing about except that it exists.
That is why, these days, I am inclined to side with professor Sidney Hook who taught that Marxist cosmology is actually unnecessary in socialist Marxist ideology as there is little or almost no connection between it and its political economy (social analysis). As a matter of fact, later "Marxists" like Herbert Marcuse and Lucien Sebag (Marxisme et Structuralisme) thoroughly ignored Marx's cosmology or ideas on the origins of the universe. The good priests and nuns who espoused Liberation Theology" took this path, using Marxist analysis of social conditions (the "superstructures" of unjust society) to fight for the oppressed while wholly ignoring the atheistic supposed underpinnings (they didn't pin anything at all) of Marxism.
The makers should be praised for great location shooting that captured the looks and ambiance (as I imagine it) of very early 20th century Italy.
This movie made me brood over the irony of a great ideology and movement put forth by noble-minded men like Proudhon and Engels which nevertheless became the spawning ground of selfish egotists like Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini. While espousing the international brotherhood of men and social equality, socialism was diverted by men like these into the monstrous ideologies of Nazism, Fascism and atheistic Communism. There, I think lies the fault - in the atheistic cosmology formulated through dialectical materialism wedded by Marx into socialist ideology. With subsequent discoveries in quantum physics, it can be said that a universe viewed through a materialistic cosmology (based on a misunderstanding of "matter") has not only become passé but untenable. After all, we now know that matter in its traditional definition is equatable to energy; that our perception of matter as solid, liquid or gas is merely a function of our senses as it perceives the force fields generated by atomic structures; that the universe as we can now perceive it with our instruments is made up largely of "dark matter" (96%) about which we know almost nothing about except that it exists.
That is why, these days, I am inclined to side with professor Sidney Hook who taught that Marxist cosmology is actually unnecessary in socialist Marxist ideology as there is little or almost no connection between it and its political economy (social analysis). As a matter of fact, later "Marxists" like Herbert Marcuse and Lucien Sebag (Marxisme et Structuralisme) thoroughly ignored Marx's cosmology or ideas on the origins of the universe. The good priests and nuns who espoused Liberation Theology" took this path, using Marxist analysis of social conditions (the "superstructures" of unjust society) to fight for the oppressed while wholly ignoring the atheistic supposed underpinnings (they didn't pin anything at all) of Marxism.
The makers should be praised for great location shooting that captured the looks and ambiance (as I imagine it) of very early 20th century Italy.