Caos Calmo

Title of the movie that is. There's always bad things happening to people and I'm pretty sure, that you as a reader have experienced grief and loss in your life. Some talk about the yin and the yang of life (let's just say that I personally do also believe in that ... believe).

The title character is portrayed wonderfully by an apparently popular Italian actor. I've seen him before, but I'm not as aware of his biography as other reviewers here. Maybe that makes me more open to his performance, I can't say that for sure. But since this is a character piece/movie it does help that the main actor is as good as he is. Of course the support cast, does help him a lot too.

Since this movie is all about feelings, it's only normal that near the end there is an "explosion" of emotion ... it's also normal, that some of the female audience members were bedazzled (in a bad way) by that particular scene. And the end is just ... normal. But then again, that's life for you (and me) ...

Can't understand all the fuss about this movie. Yes, the photography is beautiful, but that's about all. Nanni Moretti is very good at playing himself, as usual, no matter what's the name or the role he is given. It's been said that's a movie about the absence of grief: but even to that effect the sense of grief should be somehow, somewhere implied, which it is not in the least. The ending is there just because the movie had to be ended, but it could have happened like that at any point. There is no change or development. Seemingly adult people talk as if they were permanently immature teenagers and a little girl comes out with a typically adult comment on her pairs. Comments upon life, society, corporations, etc., are a sequel of common places typical of talk shows. Would be dramatic sequences seem picked out from fashionable advertising clips and have the same emotional impact. The overrated and over-discussed torrid sex scene is just a softer imitation of hard core platitudes. No doubt there was matter for drama, but apparently the author didn't know how to deal with it: may very well be that, under this viewpoint, the script has been quite truthful to the Veronesi's novel it's been based on.

The story is surely a good one and the actors all pretty good. The problem I had, and apparently it is a shared view, is that this movie has many unnecessary scenes and superficially shot details which make the result not quite as good as it could have been. A few examples? The first scene with the drowning women is just unbelievable (the sea seems totally calm, it is almost hilarious); the shots in Venice (the only reason I can see is that the film troupe wanted a little break there); the erotic scene between two not so young/not so beautiful actors (pity this scene wasn't between the gorgeous young girl and the brother of the main character, that might have been not necessary either, but at least enjoyable!) the cloying bits with the handicapped; the idealised and quite stereotypical depiction of the Roman school piazza as a nice and friendly environment; the beautiful young girl with the dog so interested in Moretti; even the end titles, with the pelouche monkey name listed... finally the music choice was quite cheesy. Anyway I would lie to say I was not entertained watching it. 6,5/10

Two middle-aged brothers - Pietro (Nanni Moretti) and Carlo (Alessandro Gassman) - play ball on the beach when suddenly two women yell for help while in the ocean. The brothers risk their lives to save the two women, only to find that the women don't even thank them. When the Paladini brothers drive back to Pietro's home, they discover that in their absence Pietro's wife has fallen and died. Pietro's 10-year-old daughter Claudia (Blu Yoshimi) is distraught and asks her father why he was not at home to save his wife. After a quiet funeral Pietro enters an existence of 'quiet chaos', neglecting his duties as a successful executive, choosing instead to sit on the bench across from Claudia's school, waiting each day in numbed silence for his daughter's completion of classes in order to drive her home. His only goal, despite various interruptions from passers-by and family members in incidents both humorous and distractingly serious, is to be there for Claudia, visible through her school window, to reassure her of his constant presence. How Pietro gradually figures out his grief, the world, and his place in it, discovering a new relationship with Claudia, forms the story line of this tender film.

Director Antonello Grimaldi, working with a screenplay adaptation of Sandro Veronesi's book by Veronesi and Nanni Moretti, draws extraordinary performances from his cast of premiere Italian actors. In an classroom scene Claudia's teacher is explaining the word 'palindrome' (a sequence of units that can be read the same way in either direction) and shares with her pupils how some things are reversible while other things are irreversible. Grimaldi and his writers and actors demonstrate this term as it applies to human events in this thoughtful story. The film, in Italian with subtitles, appeals both to the intellect and to the emotions. It is a little treasure.

Grady Harp

Nanni Moretti is not playing his neurotic self this time but he is quite convincing as a man who can't deal with his emotions at all. The good thing about the movie is that all little story lines keep on spinning around him and seem to go nowhere in the end.

Just a few things put me off. I don't know if it was necessary to make the person a top manager. He doesn't seem the type to hold that sort of position. And the symbolism of the reversibility of palindromes is a bit cheesy and over the top.

But the thing that really put me down is that one sex scene. There is nothing wrong with it in itself but it does not fit in this movie at all. The whole atmosphere changes, it is as if the movie stops, the sex scene starts, and when it's over the movie starts again. Not convincing at all.