Klaklamrmatt

I live near director's town of birth, the town where this movie is set, too, and I had, last summer, the great opportunity to see how this man works, and I can say he's so nice and he tries to be calm, even when the actors (the younger ones, in particular) couldn't do that he wants.

But I've noticed an other thing: production was very very rich (in economical terms), and maybe my judge could be partial, but when I've seen this movie, I've seen a beautiful story, rich of messages and themes (family, and the incapability to repudiate that; impossibility to escape from past and nostalgia; against the drug, even if it could seem the opposite etc..), so great job as regards the screenplay; acting is good, although many actors were very young, and "for first time on screen"; photograph is quite good (some scene have a big and quite bad using of color correction), and sounds are right.

I think (joking) Virzì is happy whenever he reaches to export his accent in the world, and his own crusade includes, in my opinion, the justice for the speaking, which before him it was the same for Florence and Tuscany's Coast. In this way, actors like Mastrandrea and Pandolfi show their great capability to give a great interpretation even with a different accent (both come from Rome).

But the worst side of the movie I think it's the shoots. They aren't bad, but probably I believed Virzì's work had a greater attention for originality, and I asked me why, with the big quantity of entourage and money he had, he forgot the attention for the originality in shooting. The shoots are many times ordinary, far from other great movies, like Fellini's Amarcord, which the review Ciak had compared with this.

With an other kind of shoots (or maybe is just the video editing, I hope) which gives to movie that "ordinary taste", breaking a little part of amazing magic of the movie, this could be one of the greatest works of Virzì, because is a personal and introspective work, like Italians know to do very well.

Although this, "La Prima Cosa Bella" is able to move the spectator, and it's a good movie, but just a little better than the standard of the genre. My final vote is a 7,5.

"The Man Who Will Come" is a drama set in an Italian's region, the Romagna (and not the Tuscany, although many shots come from there), during the II world war. The movie tells an interesting and cruel episode of the passing of the front in Italy: the Slaughter of Marzabotto, a dreadful tragedy, which becomes greater because of the number of children involved (more than two hundreds less-twelve-years-old children). This is the reason for the title, something like a dedication of the movie to children ("The Man Who Will Come" is a baby who survives to tragedy, he represents the generations of tomorrow), and in order to make stronger this connection history-childhood, a female child who doesn't speak is the protagonist of the movie. Director's aims, when he decides to coming this project, as he said recently, were two: to bring the spectator in a time travel, in a reality unknown for many people, and to narrate the war from the child's point of view. Probably, with this movie he reached to bring the spectator in the past (the choice to use the dialect, as Visconti's La Terra Trema, gives more realism to the narration, and makes the movie more eclectic than the others with the same themes; the care for details, from the lights to the clothes, is almost obsessive) but I think the point of view of the young female is just a little part of the movie: final point of view is quite objective, because there are many points of view, and this gives the taste of a good historical reconstruction. To say that this movie shows the war from the child's point of view is probably reductive, or just wrong: a movie which shows the point of view of a child in some historical period is very different from this work. Result? Nice job, but it's impossible to have an historical reconstruction of facts through a subjective point of view or, if it's possible, this movie couldn't reach it.

I've seen much movies "on the road", but this is the most dramatic and the most simple, too. It represents something of extraordinary for the spectators (and I talk for audience and moviegoers), but even for the genial Lynch, the director of this movie, who doesn't usually make linear movies: he prefers to play with flashbacks and anticipations, and his filmography is an imposing demonstration of it. I think about Twin Peaks and my brain explodes if I remember the mental confusion which it has provoked in me XD. But this movie is different. Firstly, it's a true story. Alvin Straight, the protagonist whose surname becomes a brilliant pun with the plot so linear, had really traveled in 1994 for 240 miles on a 1966 John Deere Iawn mover like the movie told us. In fact, "The Straight Story" is dedicated to his memory, because he's died in 1996. After this, we have an excellent protagonist: Richard Farnsworth, in his last interpretation. He makes life to a Character whit the "big C", because he can show us all the longing which an old man who does a similar trip certainly had. Alvin Straight becomes in my opinion an American Dersu Uzala, or a Don Chisciotte who manifests us how nothing is impossible, and we can defeat our own windmill or slope (physical and moral). Any other character in this movie is treated with the greatest care for detail which only Lynch can use for them. In brief, a great movie whit great characters (in particular Farnsworth-Straight), a great director and a great, linear story, for think and for remember our own past (or future: it depends on age! ^^) and for put all old grudges against everybody aside. SEE HIM!