Alles Wissen der Welt

Posted: Fri., Apr. 6, 2001 All The Knowledge In The World Tutta La Conoscenza Del Mondo (Italy)

By David STRATTON

Twenty-nine-year-old director Eros Puglielli displays a precocious but uneven talent in "All the Knowledge in the World," his first cinema feature following a series of well-regarded video clips and video-films. While demonstrating considerable skills as a filmmaker, Puglielli is on less sure ground with a screenplay that attempts to straddle several genres, to ultimately diminishing returns. Fests may want to spotlight this up and comer, but commercial chances appear to be slender. Pic starts with a bang when Marco (Marco Bonini), a young would-be rocker, attempts to rescue Claudio (Claudio Guain), a wheelchair bound man who gets stuck in the middle of a railway track as a nonstop express approaches. Staging, filming and editing of this sequence is masterly, and gets the film off to a powerful start. Just as it seems both men are doomed to die, the hurtling train is stopped by a mysterious force in the shape of a luminous white creature, perhaps an alien, or maybe an angel.

Whatever caused their salvation, both Marco and Claudio are profoundly affected by the apparent miracle. The authorities won't believe Marco's story, and Claudio pretends he's forgotten what happened. But their lives are changed forever.

Claudio goes to live with his niece, Giovanna (Giovanna Mezzogiorno), and secretly -- and obsessively -- begins collecting material on sightings of aliens.

Giovanna, meanwhile, is besotted with self-important philosophy professor (Giorgio Albertazzi). They begin an apparently chaste relationship, which culminates in an "Eyes Wide Shut"-like sequence in which the prof turns out to be a member of a cult practicing some kind of witchcraft.

Marco becomes a top-of-the-chart rock singer but still seeks an answer to the miracle he witnessed. Inevitably Marco and Giovanna find one another.

Puglielli claims that this often strange and uneven film was made to pose basic questions about the very meaning of life, but it's much less profound than that. Yet even if it doesn't really hang together, much of the film intrigues and, occasionally, dazzles.

The cast is excellent, with Mezzogiorno a radiant heroine and Bonini, who has the looks of a younger Antonio Banderas, a rugged hero. Production values are very slick in every department, and the music is lively.

http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117797747.html? categoryid=31&cs=1&query=maRCO+BONINI

Tutta la conoscenza del mondo is a charming, goofy send-up of New Age icons and obsessions. Although set in Italy, this film transcends its cultural source and neatly skewers the New Age zeitgeist at its quasi-philosophical, global core. The writing and performances are deft, the central characters developed and engaging. We laugh, but at the same time experience a twinge of empathy: who has never been seduced (intellectually or sexually) by the promise of connection with the Other? Surreal special effects and carefully choreographed camera work keep this fast-paced comedy bouncing along as we become increasingly caught up in the protagonists' frenzied quests for enlightenment; through the philoso-babble of the university professor who simultaneously seduces and stupefies his pretty female students; into the world of the hapless rock band, created and utterly controlled by marketing strategists; past the New Age (yet somehow Pythonesque) guru who performs a miraculous `levitation of the arms' to the film's rather touching conclusion. Ultimately, Tutta la conoscenza del mondo leaves us with the satisfied sensation of having seen a `feel good' film which is at the same time pointed social satire. (Warning: followers of New Age ideology will not get this one at all.)

This is a very pleasant 'little' movie. The plot is about the discovering of unknown aspects of life even by positive characters far from believing in extrasensory phenomena. The director puts together lightly and ironically the loud teacher of philosophy, his class and the simple, but wise uncle.

Different lives, different ideas, different minds: everything goes together and you can't understand what is true and what not.

It's worth to see.