Simone Marchetti: the great complication

This editorial by Simone Marchetti is published in number 37 of Vanity Fair on newsstands until 9 September 2025.

September arrives with a wind of chaos: the instability in France, the war in Ukraine and the genocide in Gaza, the lies of Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu, the bullying of Donald Trump, the American duties that upset the European economy. The list of factors that generate confusion, fear and pain is long: in the next pages, Our editorialists try to go into some of these topics by pushing themselves beyond appearances to bring to light deeper truths And, sometimes, to identify some glimmer of hope.

This number of Vanity Fairin a certain way, it is divided in half: on the one hand you will find themes related to current affairs, to what is happening, to the drama of many events. On the other hand, we tried to lighten the load of questions, investigations and reports bringing you into the cinema, In the best events related to the current Venice Film Festival and to discover a cover protagonist, Emily Blunt, that from the very famous role in Devil wears Prada returns to the scenes with The Smashing Machinefilm in competition at the Festival.

There are many topics that you will find in the next pages, from the reflections on the real Italian scourge, tax evasion, a A night trip from Milan to Cosenza that reflects the infinite stories, almost always hidden and almost never narratedof a country that tries to deal with the prevailing chaos.

Chaos, in fact. At the Venice Film Festival, three films made me think about it. The first is After the Huntby Luca Guadagnino, a long and dense succession of dialogues and very verbose quarrels that tries to put the finger in the wounds of me too without looking for heroes, justifications or executioners, but highlighting the great complication of the cultural revolution in progress.

The second is Bugoniaby the director Yorgos Lanthimos, an ironic and ruthless act of accusation to the terraciattisti and conspiracy theorists who are making human information and knowledge sink into an abyss of ignorance and violence as a few times seen before.

Finally, the third is the Frankenstein by Guillermo del Toro, with a magnificent Jacob Elordi in the role of the “monster”. In the famous scene of the creature of the creature with the old blind man, there is a lot of the magic of the film but also all the awareness necessary today: the completely changed world does not require only new eyes but, even, a change of sensitivity and knowledge.

We are faced with an unpublished panorama where the great complications call us to new visions and other solutions. The time has come to read more, study more, inquire more. We will try to do it and help you do it in all months of this autumn that promises to be very complicated.

Simone Marchetti

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