Tre fratelli

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.