This is truly one of the most careless and poorly made "films" I've ever seen. I use the word "film" loosely because it's basically just a bunch of people reading passages from two books by an Italian author. I can only surmise that the "directors" were moved by these books and wanted to bring them to life on the screen, but had no concept of how to do it. I do not believe for a second that they intended to make the movie this way. So what is it about?
Well, the first section is six sections from a book on classical mythology. Each scene is two actors speaking to each other while sitting or standing in various locations in the Italian countryside. The camera doesn't move at all except once in awhile to shift between speakers. Most of the "actors" speak in monotone voices while looking vaguely off camera. This is because they are very obviously reading their lines from cue cards or maybe even a book being held in front of them. Every scene is literally a static shot of two people dressed in ancient Roman garb walking together or sitting together reading scenes from this book on mythology. It's beyond boring even if you're into mythology which I'm not. The people who say this movie is great are doing so only because they think it's supposed to have some deep meaning and they don't want to be the one who didn't get it.
There's no directing here!! At certain points the actors stop speaking and we watch them sit there or walk down the street for upwards of 30 seconds to a full minute which is a long time in a movie without any plot.
The second part of the film is also conversations between actors, but this time they're reciting from a book about how things have changed in Italy since the war. Some of the dialogue is interesting in terms of content, but I know I would have enjoyed it more had I been reading it myself. Instead we're forced to watch two men or a man and child sitting at an outdoor cafe just talking to one other. We have no real idea who they are and no reason to care about them.
At certain points, the directors seem to give up trying to create something interesting on screen so the screen goes black while we listen to the actors finish reciting from the book. When we do see them, they all seem to be gazing at something offscreen (cue cards). Toward the end, the main actor gives up pretending he's not reading and we see him with glasses for the first time and he's looking down at his lap as he's speaking. Now we're watching a guy reading from a book without even the PRETENSE that he's learned his lines or that it's something organic. The clever "directors" think they're fooling the audience by not showing the book he's reading from. I would have respected them more if they would have acknowledged the book instead of trying to hide it. In between long conversations and two shots, we watch the actors walk or stare at them staring at each other. At a couple points in the film, several minutes elapsed where there was no dialogue or music and we were watching the backs of two men walk down a dirt road. The directors couldn't be bothered to build a tracking shot so we could walk in front of them and see their faces as they walked! Instead these lazy "artistes" just walked behind the two actors while we counted their hair follicles. This went on for over two minutes and was repeated several times in different iterations (standing, sitting, walking). Disgraceful.
There's nothing artistic about having unattractive people read from a book unless you're at a live poetry reading. I don't know why they didn't just make this into a radio program or some kind of audio art. This was not a movie in any sense of the word. I get that they must really love the author's work, but that doesn't mean they knew how to bring it to the screen. This was painful to sit through and very poorly directed. In fact I find it hard to believe that they even gave the actors any direction at all. Way too many amateur mistakes. I think they figured if they had people saying really deep philosophical things dressed in togas that nobody would notice how bad this was. The sad truth is that some critics actually bought into this thinking that it was so deep that it must be good. WRONG. Good movies should SHOW you, not TELL you. And good movies are there to ENTERTAIN. From the Clouds to the Resistance did neither of those things. If you can find this movie (it's a rather obscure one), just keep on moving. It's not worth an hour and 40 minutes of your life. You'd have a better time watching paint dry.
