The Bad Poet (2021) poster
2021 · history · drama

The Bad Poet

Directed by Gianluca Jodice1h 46m2021
ElsewhereIMDb6.3662
  • sombre
  • measured
Movie DNA

Sombre, measured, gentle history / drama, grounded in texture. Ambivalent, mid-stakes, cold, hand-scored across twelve axes of taste.

How every film is hand-scored →

1936. Giovanni Comini, the youngest Federal in Fascist Italy, is summoned to Rome for a delicate mission: to surveil aging national poet Gabriele D'Annunzio, whose increasingly restless behavior Mussolini fears could damage his alliance with Nazi Germany. However, after spending time with D'Annunzio, Comini finds himself torn between loyalty to the Party and his fascination with the poet, who will put his burgeoning career at risk.

Our read · The Bad Poet (2021) reads as a sombre, measured, grounded history · drama entry — gentle in intensity, mid-stakes in scope, cold in temperature, ambivalent in outlook. Hand-scored on twelve axes of taste — mood, pacing, weirdness, hope, stakes, humour, reality, density, warmth, auteur, intensity, and era — with a derived palette drawn from its dominant cinematography.

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The shape of The Bad Poet

Tonight, this looks like

What watching it is actually like.

You want an Italian historical drama about a young fascist drawn to the aging poet D'Annunzio.

ends bittersweetit stays with yousteady all the waygrips by minute 20attention 4/5earns its lengthsubtitles: full
Date nightWith friendsSoloWith parentsKids around
Heads-upsuicide themedrug use

Skip it tonightSkip if you dislike slow biopics steeped in 1930s fascism, cocaine, and regret.

DNA · twelve axes

The reading.

Each axis is hand-scored — not derived from votes or genre averages. The marker shows where this film sits; the gradient fill uses the film's own cinematography palette.

Mood · HeavyCosy
Pacing · Slow-burnKinetic
Intensity · GentleExtreme
Weirdness · ConventionalSurreal
Hope · NihilisticRedemptive
Stakes · IntimateEpic
Humour · NoneBroad
Reality · GroundedFantastical
Density · SparseTwisty
Warmth · ColdTender
Auteur · TransparentSignature
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