Videocracy

Stunning, eerily atmospheric.

If a team of clever screenwriters tried to script a cautionary tale about the politics of fame (and the fame of politics), they likely couldn’t come up with anything odder or more apt than Erik Gandini’s documentary Videocracy.

Given the stakes, it’s hard not to wish that Mr. Gandini had been more ambitious: at 85 minutes, Videocracy can only scratch the surface. Even so, after watching it, you realize that even a cursory look at Mr. Berlusconi is crucial to understanding an age in which celebrity is now the coin of the realm.

Gandini makes it seem as if the nation of Dante and Fellini has been conquered by "Girls Gone Wild." As hyperbolic cases go, that's a pretty delicious one, but it's not quite true yet.

Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi is an ideal documentary subject, but Erik Gandini's jumbled take on Berlusconi's corrupting influence quickly shifts from good idea to wasted opportunity.

Rather than presenting a well-argued expose of the disturbing symbiosis that exists between Italo politics and TV, with Prime Minister Berlusconi being only the most obvious connection, the scribe-helmer gets sidetracked by marginal characters while keeping bare facts to a minimum.

Videocracy is hopelessly infected with the very prurience it means to expose--again and again, Gandini returns to images of pretty women grinding away for the camera in hopes of scoring their 15 minutes.