Review: Tornatore's 'Brunello' Is Seductive Hagiography
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- Giuseppe Tornatore directed "Brunello: The Gracious Visionary" for Cucinelli's own namesake production company, with Tornatore calling the film "neither a documentary, nor a feature film, nor a commercial" — functioning primarily as hagiography.
- Cucinelli, born in 1956 on a rural farm near Perugia, narrates his own childhood memories, which the film then recreates with a fictional younger counterpart played by Francesco Cannevale walking back through those scenes.
- The film takes more than an hour to reach Cucinelli's early business ventures, highlighting inspirations including a hated pair of green corduroy pants from his teens and a caramel coat that later anchored his menswear line.
- In 2021, Cucinelli spoke alongside then-Prince Charles at the G20 summit to present his "humanistic capitalism" principles, after his company refused layoffs or salary cuts during the COVID pandemic.
- The reviewer criticizes the film for never asking why Cucinelli's price points are prohibitive to non-affluent customers or whether his workers can afford the garments, noting interviewees — including Patrick Dempsey, Oprah, and unnamed spiritual leaders — all come from a "rarified social and financial strata."
- Nicola Piovani composed the score, and the film concludes with an extended tracking shot of Cucinelli at the head of a shared family table where factory workers eat homemade rigatoni together, a visual restatement of the "company as family" philosophy.
Why it matters: When a luxury brand built on a 'humanistic capitalism' thesis — including a 2021 G20 speech alongside then-Prince Charles — commissions a glowing portrait through its own production company, the absence of questions about worker wages and price accessibility becomes the story's loudest omission, undercutting the very philosophy the brand sells.
