The latest venture

This article is published in number 37 of Vanity Fair on newsstands until September 14, 2021

It is in Calabria. His son Lorenzo sleeps in the next room and may wake up at any moment. Case in which, he warns me, we should interrupt our conversation: the child is in his hands, his partner is busy with work. Responsible father, a combination that suits him very much, the seal of a life path
incarnate millimeter by millimeter, which in November will make him a parent for the second time.

Alessio Boni is a tenacious man, to whom the latest feat was easy. On 12 September, ten years after the death of the “king of the Alps”, will tell us who Walter Bonatti was and how he lived the love that tied him to a famous actress for thirty years.

A dense fabric of events and testimonies, On the roof of the world – Walter Bonatti and Rossana Podestà, docufiction by Stand By Me per Rai Fiction directed by Stefano Vicario (son of the same Podestà). Climber, explorer, journalist, writer and photojournalist with a deep wound, the lack of truth on the story of the famous mountaineering expedition
which in 1954 was the first to reach the summit of K2. It took fifty years, in fact, to demonstrate what he repeated relentlessly, namely that he did not try to precede Lacedelli and Compagnoni in reaching the summit, and that he did not consume part of the oxygen destined for them to complete the feat. . It was he who was “the forsaken”, in a
a place not agreed upon, at more than 8,000 meters, “a kind of murder”, as Messner explains in an interview.

And to tell us about a real one, about murder, in a few days Boni will fly to Prague to shoot a film about the Baths of Terezin, the ghetto intended by Hitler for all the deported Jewish artists, those who “if they had survived would have changed the fate of art of the twentieth century », he says. And in the fall we will also see him in the new film by Marco Tullio Giordana for Netflix, in the role of the commander of the Carabinieri involved in the investigation of Yara Gambirasio, the thirteen-year-old from Brembate murdered in 2010.

Walter Bonatti was a Bergamasco like you, what else do you have in common?
“The tenacity. He went against everything and everyone, in my small way I did it too, to win the job of actor. Bonatti had against the great mountaineers who mocked him, at first he didn’t even have boots, the first pair was second-hand, bought on a stall because he felt something inside ».

“Men betray you, never the mountain”: what would she say about it?
«It is the sentence of those who have felt betrayed. But the motto that brought me closest to him was: “The higher he climbs, the farther he sees; the farther away he sees, the longer he dreams “. A wonderful search for man, in addition to Alaska and all the journeys made. It is a search for immensity within oneself, understanding that we are born as potential Einstein,
Leonardo, Raphael ».

In his literary debut, Biting the fog, he says: “I finally wondered who I am, I had the time.”
“Honestly, without a lockdown I could never have written a book. My son Lorenzo was born, he looked at me 24 hours a day, he was with me at home, he sent me back to when I was 15 on the Vespa, at the lake. A flashback from which a self-analysis started ».

What changed it?
«I’m slower than before, I look more at us than at me, I like to listen more».

Bonatti, at a certain point, from a climber became an explorer, and his path from vertical became horizontal: did you also have such a clear change?
«I went vertically until March 22, 2020, when my son was born. Now it is he who is making me travel horizontally ».

Have you ever felt alone?
“I have been and continue to be, in a way. An actor is alone with his memory, his heartbeat in front of a theater audience, or on stage in front of a great actor. It’s you, only with your abilities ».

Has it ever happened that a public figure declared «I would run away to a desert island with Boni», as Rossana does in an interview, mentioning Walter?
“Someone so well known has never said it, but I am constantly receiving emails on the subject”. He laughs.

How does a woman have to be with her for the relationship to work?
“Decided. Must ask directly, I love those who know what they want. But if it’s not also sweet and feminine, it destabilizes me. Then, of course, the intentions and the vision of the world must be similar ».

In Bonatti’s case, the movie star who wanted a real, concrete life was Rossana …
«Attention, Bonatti was a star, a kind of Alberto Tomba of the time. In some ways he was more famous than her, especially in the North. He gave her adventure but also a sense of security that even her father had never given her. You make a woman feel safe and you win her over, she trusts you. “

Have you had nightmares?
“For years I’ve had the actor’s one, I woke up at night and didn’t remember the lines. Cinema doesn’t give you this fear, theater and inexperience do it ».

And now that he will be a father again in November?
“I feel I have this need, to expand myself more as a man.”

Are you aiming for a football team?
“I once said I wanted three children. It seems to me the perfect number, they all fit in a car ».

Photo Gianmarco Chieregato

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