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In a farmhouse in southern Italy, an old woman dies. Her husband summons their sons: from Rome, Raffaele, a judge facing a political case for which he risks assassination; from Naples, the religious and ideological Rocco, a counselor at a correctional institute for boys; from Turin, Nicola, a factory worker involved in labor disputes.

"Three Brothers" is based on a work by Soviet playwright Andrei Platonov and adapted by prolific screenwriter Tonino Guerra ("Blow-Up"). Assisting with the adaptation was director Francesco Rosi, who never seems to have quite achieved the world renown of other Italian directors, despite his highly-praised "The Mattei Affair". Joining Rosi at the helm is two-time Oscar-winning cinematographer Pasqualino DeSantis, who provides a higher quality look than your average Italian film.

As a writer myself, what is most striking about the film for me is the adaptation. The original story is set in Russia in the early 20th century, and the new story is set in Italy in the second half of the century. That may not seem like a big deal, but the particulars are certainly quite different. Soviet Russia is in no way the same culturally as Naples or Rome. And yet, the story is flawlessly ported over.

Arrow Video brings us an excellent Blu-ray. We have a brand new 2K restoration from original film materials. The key special feature is an archival audio interview with Francesco Rosi from 1987. Any scholar of Rosi will appreciate this conversation that runs over an hour. We also get a booklet featuring an essay by Millicent Marcus, a 1981 interview with Rosi and a selection of contemporary reviews. Unfortunately, there is no commentary, nor any interview with star Michele Placido, but this is still a fine release nonetheless for an otherwise neglected film.

I've always been very interested in Italy, its culture, its architecture, its cinema,... and that's why I will not let a chance go by to watch an Italian movie, because most of the time you'll see a fine combination of all these factors in it. So far I've already seen several Italian films, including some fine award winners like "La Meglio gioventù" and "La Stanza del figlio", and I can't remember that I've seen many that I really didn't like.

"Tre fratelli" tells the story of three brothers who return to the farmhouse in southern Italy where they grew up after the death of their mother. Except for their family ties, the three adult men don't really seem to have anything in common. Raffaele is a happily married judge in Rome who risks to be assassinated for a political case he hasn't even accepted yet, Rocco is a single social worker who works at a correctional institute for boys in Naples and Nicola is a radical factory worker from Turin who lives separated from his wife and who is involved in labor disputes and therefor risks to be fired. Together they have several discussions about the meaning of life, marriage terrorism, the mafia,... while their father grieves over the loss of his wife with his young granddaughter, who he also teaches something about life in the countryside.

Perhaps not everybody agrees with me, but this movie reminded me a lot of "La Meglio gioventù". And you can definitely see that as a compliment, because I really loved that movie a lot. This movie too showed how several family members, who don't seem to have much in common at first, make the best of their lives together, with the current social and political situation in Italy on the background. The main difference is that this movie only focuses on the 1980's, while the story of the other movie started in 1966 and ended in 2000.

Philippe Noiret, Michele Placido and Vittorio Mezzogiorno are very nice to watch as the brothers and Charles Vanel was very good as their father, but if I have to chose one actor who really surprised me, then it must be the young Marta Zoffoli. Despite her young age, she gave away a very fine performance and in my opinion she was the true star of the movie.

Overall this is a very nice drama that certainly should get a lot more attention than what it has received so far. When I see that it has only received 130 votes until now, I truly believe that this movie doesn't get the audience that it deserves. It has a good story and some very fine acting to offer, the decors are nice and thanks to Francesco Rosi, the director and co-writer of this movie, everything has been brought together into one solid movie. I give this movie at least a 7.5/10 and hope that many more will see it.

Beautifully directed and beautifully shot film from Francesco Rosi. From the wonderfully framed shot behind the opening credits at the very start I was enchanted and fascinated. A simple enough tale of an old man calling his three sons to his isolated farmhouse following the death of their mother. The three are all at work in the modern world and we gather it is rare that they meet up or visit their childhood home. Contrasts abound between the three and their father and their differing lifestyles. The judgmental judge, the utopian carer for delinquent boys and the militant factory worker (all representing facets of the director's personality, he is said to have claimed) all discuss the way they see the world and more especially their homeland, then being torn apart by assassinations, corruption and union and mafia intervention. Pastoral and yet vigorous with the undercurrents of pessimism and loss of hope and search for love are very well handled and make for absorbing viewing.

THREE BROTHERS narrows with ease the gulf between two creative approaches in Italian cinema: the drama of social observation and the poetry of lyric force. That any film-maker would be able to look at the problems of a modern industrial society with the sensitivity of a poet or a painter is a wonder in itself. That director Francesco Rosi succeeds so eloquently is doubly wondrous. But then this is the gifted creator of CHRIST STOPPED AT EBOLI and ILLUSTRIOUS CORPSES. The three brothers have returned to their southern home village after the death of their mother. The film begins with the magnified sounds of heartbeats on the soundtrack against the bleak images of a huge building with dark, knocked-out windows. When the credits end we are shown a hideous cluster of rats in close-up. It is the disturbing nightmare we have shared with the middle of three brothers, a worker in a boys' reformatory in Naples. Frustrated by his battle to keep kids off drugs and away from crime, he is the self-giving liberal who is losing the fight. The younger brother is a Turin factory worker, embittered about his working conditions and victim of a failing marriage. The eldest son is a sedate magistrate in a Roman court who is handling a case involving terrorists and who constantly fears for his own life. He also looks upon his radicalized younger brother as a threat, one of the potential terrorists he is struggling against. The Puglia village to which the brothers return is an impoverished place from which they have long escaped and for which each professes a hopeless nostalgic attachment. Much of the movie delves into the varying anxieties of the brothers at a moment of intense introspection. Their aging patriarch father, on the other hand, is a man of great dignity, calm, and simple religious fervor, an emblem of what modern society has lost. He reflects a diminishing and changing past that can never be regained. It is a past that the old man's little granddaughter, with her childlike fascination for the little pleasures of country life, becomes fond of. There is bond between the two that is one of the most touching elements of this film. In a way she is a continuation of her own dead grandmother's attachment to the simple joys of life. The film says that while the sons have gained something in the amenities of urban civilization, they have lost something as well, something vital and profound. They have lost their home, their roots, their traditional values. They lie on children's cots now too small for them. They are overgrown children in cribs, and their uneasy reflections take on the bitterness of regret. They had departed from here for the best of reasons and once gone, as the youngest brother explains, they became immediately homesick. What is in THREE BROTHERS? Very little, if you count. There is a death, a brief return to a hometown, a few memories and flashbacks, some jarring evocations, a child playing, a burial, a beautiful final image. Indeed, nothing much happens. And yet it is as though everything happens. From its poetic tableau-like portrait of life, death, homesickness, there emerges a tapestry of modern society, perhaps even modern man in general, that is as violently graphic as it is lovingly gentle. It is a work of art.

Beautifully shot family tale with an excellent cast of top-notch actors is obviously meant, with its multi-level narrative, as fable for life and society in Italy.

In the seventies, Italian judges ran the risk of being murdered. (These days, they are liberally berated by Signore Berlusconi, which I suppose is a change for the better.) The conflicts that ran through Italian society at the time are vividly reflected in "Tre Fratelli". The plot briefly reunites three brothers of quite different ages at their mother's death-bed. The oldest is a judge fighting terrorism, the youngest an industrial union member fighting for better work conditions. The third has dedicated his life to teaching difficult boys, and pleads for peace when his brothers start airing their views at each other and bickering over the use of violence in politics.

All three are idealists with lots of ideas. Although Rosi is interested in these ideas to a degree which immature viewers may find taxing, he emphasizes the emptiness of ideas alone. At one point the judge gets to say: some of us want to become as rich as they can, some of us want to change everything, both sides want to do it ASAP, and both have a terrible contempt for human life. On a more private note, none of the brothers has an unequivocally happy marriage. The judge's wife fears he will be killed and is constantly pleading with him to refuse dangerous cases; the youngest brother leaves his temperamental wife when she has one affair to his dozens; the teacher fears the intimacy of a committed relationship, and has remained celibate.

The ancient widower, in harmony with the picturesque countryside he lives in, is a contrast to his sons' torments. Even his memories of his wife are as good as it gets. Each of the characters has a dream episode; his is the only one that is neither unhappy nor utopian. He tells his city-bred granddaughter about her grandmother, about animals and stars, and the two reach an understanding deeper than that of the "grown-ups". Is it only women who place survival above politics? Is it only the very young and the very old who are wise enough not to take human affairs too seriously?

"Happy the man, and happy he alone, he who can call the day his own; he who, secure within, can say: Tomorrow, do thy worst! For I have lived today."

"Tre fratelli" is a most evocative film that poses to the viewer fundamental questions of life, relationships, and how both can unknowingly be lost.

Raffaele, Nicola, and Rocco, the three brothers, had emigrated from their hometown in Puglia. Raffaele, the judge, although outwardly sedate, is consumed by paranoiac fear for his life. That fear puts a strain on his marital life. While Raffaele lives in fear, Nicola dwells over his poor marriage. His pain is so terrible not only because he still has feelings for his wife, but also because of Marta, his daughter. As Marta and her father were driving in the car back to Puglia, there was an intense chemistry between the two. The love he felt for his daughter was genuine and pronounced. Rocco, the third brother, is somewhat of a radical. That's almost expected; he runs a reform school, a very tiring job. He clashes with his brother, Raffaele, who fears that he is one of the terrorists that would kill him. "Tre fratelli" is a very ironic title. The brothers are not at all similar. They do, however, have on thing in common. They're all unhappy people.

Donato, the father, is in a world completely different from that of his sons. He's not the most loquacious person. However, he is a man of tremendous faith. He has no part of the Northern/Southern Italian class conflicts. By remaining at home, has retained his values. That's not to say that anyone who moves away loses his values. But, in the brothers' case, they had truly forgotten the "paese" that they had left.

In the film, there was an underlying theme of cultural change. As the boundaries between the North and South became less defined, so would the bucolic life of the South that could so easily impart values upon its people. Marta and Donato's relationship grows out of that nostalgic reflection on days gone by. Marta's presence is crucial. She brings out her grandfather's character, so representative of traditional familial values, which otherwise would have been drowned by the bickering of the brothers. With Donato's flashbacks, it becomes evident that Marta reminds him so much of his deceased wife; both could live their life in a simplistic, yet joyful way. The technique of flashback clearly enriches the message of director Francesco Rosi. Sadly, the viewer becomes predisposed to the feeling that those traditional values will die with time. In one of the more important instances of flashback, Donato recalls the time when he was at the beach with his wife, and they found her ring. In its unadulterated form, that scene conveyed pure joy. The final scene in which Donato held the ring was incredibly symbolic. As he held it, he came to the bittersweet understanding that he had lived his life in search of happiness, had found it. No matter how much longer he had to live, he would know that he had lived a good life. Regional and class conflicts obviously manifest themselves in the relationships of the three brothers. Before they even realized it, they were deprived of the values and maturing experiences that their father treasured so dearly. When they went home to Puglia, they truly didn't go home. That small town had ceased to be their home a long time ago. But, Rome, Turin, and Naples were no longer true homes to the brothers, either. To truly be home, one must first know what he truly desires.

At the end of the mother's funeral, while mourning their mother, it seems as if the brothers understand the essence of their family, as envisioned by their father and mother. Paradoxically, it takes the death of their mother to catalyze a rebirth in the lives of the three brothers.

"Tre fratelli" is obviously not acclaimed because of a climactic plot. It is Francesco Rosi's masterful portrayal of two conflicting perceptions of life that are so very clear to the viewer. By juxtaposing the relationships between the three brothers and that of Donato and Marta, Rosi's theme is magnified, reminding the viewer that we should all have an idea of the life we wish to lead. Let's note, however, that Donato does not live in a world of ignorant bliss; he is not naive. He merely had a clear perception of his true, human desires. The end of "Tre fratelli" is quite hopeful. It shows the viewer that no matter how much we isolate ourselves, we can always return. The brothers returned home as strangers, but it's obvious that in Puglia, their memories of the past were ignited, beseeching them to return to way that beatifies the fundamental joy in life, a joy that is not excluseive to southern Italy. We can live happily anywhere. As "Tre fratelli" so heart-wrenchingly reminds us, our lives can slip by quickly, yet without meaning. However, by looking inside of ourselves, we can always regain that which we have lost.

I just watched this film with my wife on a Netflix DVD. It is a very slow-paced film, but it captivates you and does what a great film should always do-- it transports you to another world and allows you to enter the lives of other people. In this case, we see the world through the eyes of three brothers, each of whom has long ago moved away from the impoverished village in southern Italy where they grew up. Each has taken on a distinct vocation-- The eldest is a respected judge, a member of the establishment, who, in spite of threats from terrorists, continues to carry out his duty. The middle brother is a liberal, charitable man who is trying to help kids in trouble and whose heart bleeds for the wretched of the earth. The youngest is a Don Juan, who migrated to the northern city of Turin to find work and got mixed up in the radical labor movements that are close to, if not part of, the very terrorist organization the elder brother is trying to stop.

The three brothers engage in conversation about these matters and we see their thoughts in dreams and flashbacks. But what really grounds the film is the old man, their father, and his remembrances of his recently departed wife. His tenderness with his granddaughter also gives the movie a sweet touch. In the end, this film leaves you richer for the experience of having watched it.

Francesco Rosi's "Tre fratelli" looks at three brothers who return to their childhood home after their mother dies. The movie goes into a study of the dissimilar paths that their lives have taken them. Raffaele (Philippe Noiret) is a judge prosecuting individuals charged with terrorism; Nicola (Michele Placido) is a union leader who supports the people targeted by Raffaele; and Rocco (Vittorio Mezzogiorno) works in a correctional institute for boys. But even beyond the different paths that the brothers' lives have taken them, the movie looks at their relationship (or lack thereof) with their father (Charles Vanel). It turns out that only the granddaughter is truly able to bond with the patriarch.

The movie is almost mystifying in its focus on this family. Raffaele's dream brings up the issue of what constitutes terrorism. But in the end, all sides are forced to recognize that they are still a family. The granddaughter seems to represent the innocence that the brothers were forced to abandon as they went their separate ways in life. The end result is a very thought-provoking movie, definitely one that I recommend.

And it tries very hard ... unfortunately it never truly delivers. The story as it is has many facets that are interesting, but it never really get's interesting for the viewer. While the actors seem to try to make the best of it, you never really comprehend, where all this is trying to go, what it tries to tell you. It's a shame, because it would've been a really good movie ...

The downfall might be the structure (I can't really put my finger on it). Different time-lines that do collide, some interestingly some not so much. Plot threads opened, some resolved in an unsatisfying way and issues come and go leaving you a bit uncaring about the characters and their problems ... Well it's independent, but I still had higher hopes from this movie.

Rossi touches the spectator with a movie that is part the modern Italy, being the way of living of the three brothers, and the old and more rural Italy, the lifestyle of Donato, the father. "Tre fratelli" is a melancolic piece of art, the way Donato remembers his wife and how Marta can remember him of his wife. The relationship between the three brothers is seemed to be tense due to the differences between them until Raffaele asks Rocco about his sexual life...something that always seem to break tension between brothers or friends. It is very interesting how all the adults have a dream or a memory and therefore we are told part of the story that way, such as the real fear of Nicola to be killed or the willingnes of Rocco to help the problematic kids.

Another Rossi piece of art in a simple and poetic way.

"Three Brothers" (Italian, 1980): An extremely melancholy movie – more like the depression of a Swedish film or the ennui of a French film, than anything typically Italian. Three estranged brothers receive word their Mother has died. Daily lives are put on hold, and each heads to the "country" for the funeral, their Father, and to reacquaint with one another in the village of their childhood. The three are shown in forgiving contrast to their Father, one of the son's daughters, and the old family dog. Think of this movie as a trim, non-commercial, patient, personal, very thoughtful "Big Chill". The scoring was perfectly sad and delicate throughout…you will not want to get up and dance. However, unlike a Swedish film, "Three Brothers" does slowly reveal glimmers of acceptance and hope.

This film made during the late seventies studies how a family deals with the death of their martriarch. I found myself relatively bored watching the film but I was impressed with the amount of detail that went into developing the characters. What is most impressive is how the filmmaker concentrates on the differences in generations. That is to say the filmmaker compares and contrasts each caracter with where they were born, when, and how they were brought up.

If you are in the mood for a sit back and rest type of film this is not it. But if you want a thinker, you've met your match.