Rialto

This is a modern tragedy that reminded me of Buchner's ' Wozzeck ' and Thomas Mann's ' Death in Venice '. A 46 year old man is at the end of his tether, and all around him are strangers in his family who do not know him, and strangers outside of him who deprive him of the only job he has ever had. He loves only an inaccessible youth and like Aschenbach in ' Death in Venice ' he sees him as the embodiment of beauty, when the youth is all too pathetically human. The film is anything but rough in its direction, and the acting is superb. It is not an easy film to watch, but then the finest works of art are ( and should be ) challenging and difficult. The music underlines this and rarely has music been so well used. There is a scene in mud fields that moved me a lot and the music in that scene was excellent and added to the ' Wozzeck ' feel I had throughout the film. It had echoes of Alban Berg who put the Buchner play to music and made it one of the greatest and hardest Opera's to watch and bear. But like all works that work at the highest level ' Rialto ' left me with a gift, and that is the gift of further understanding mankind, and the complexities of being human, plus the extremities of abuse that are inflicted constantly on us as human beings. Rialto was that part of Venice where Aschenbach stayed in ' Death in Venice '. A painful but necessary gem that validates the art of film supremely.

A middle aged married man from Dublin struggles to stay afloat as his life and relationships with others deteriorates, his knowledge of who and what he is becomes increasingly acute and the structures he's built his life around begin to cascade and tumble. The far from uncommon drink, depression and betrayal invariably plays out, albeit with a not so common betrayal perspective, which is the only piece of the story that really differentiates it from many things you've seen before. Fine performances compensate for the dot to dot editing, with the conclusion that what you have just seen is generally played out with a myriad of variations on the theme the world over - every day, every week, every year. You may well be playing it out now within your own variation.

I thought this would be an interesting look at how 2 worlds collide and would have something fun to take away. WRONG. It was extremely slow and boring. I get what the other reviewers said about each man escaping from the pressures of being a man, but seriously? There are no happy moments at all in this film and an ending that leaves you wondering why on earth you just wasted the time to watch this. I was really wanting .... something out of this, but ... you just leave with nothing. Sadly, this was a waste of time, imo.

Good performances and solid drama makes this movie an interesting and sometimes hard to watch movie. It makes you feel for its characters, their poor situations and its conclusion makes you wonder what would happen next. A good watch.

Many on here have stated how depressing this film is and I suppose they have a point, but I saw it differently despite its sadness. I saw this as the story of a man wanting himself and others around him to live lives without deceit and with honesty. He is coming to this point in his middle aged life after his father has just died, his lifetime job is ending and he finds himself slowly pursuing a young male prostitute. The film never gets into details about the past regarding his sexuality, but he is clearly new to this facet in his life and one has to suspect that he's been secretly dealing and not acting upon these desires. The lead performance is wonderful. Tom Vaughan-Lawlor is an actor I am completely unfamiliar with and he is just simply perfection in this role. Ultimately, it's a fairly simple story about a man wanting to live honestly despite what may be. The ending was a bit of a surprise, but it's an interesting way to leave us.