Stanno tutti bene

I like Robert De Niro as much as anyone, however the American version of Stanno Tutti Bene reduces the main role encapsulated with such finesse and effortlessness by Marcello Mastroianni that I must insist the original be viewed to compare...I recommend anyone with a genuine appreciation of Italian cinema to rent this movie. Sadly it remains unavailable in DVD. I am advised that it will soon be.

Stanno tutti Bene is without a doubt one of Mastroianni's finest performance,he captures both our eyes and our hearts as an endearing Italian patriarch. The story is simple spiced by moments of pure emotion and also humour. A sombre,sad,almost clown like humour is projected by Mastroianni's interpretation the evident disconnection with reality he is faced with really does tell us that at times "Ignorance is bliss"

Facing one's parents, the sentence mostly said from us is "everybody's fine". The grown up children don't want their older parents to worry about them, and hide their problems and sadness. Sometimes, to find the truth out may not be the best way. The movie shows us the permanent love from parents and reminds us to review the relationship with parents. Very touching and lovely movie.

I saw this film many years ago, and still think of it as one of the finest movies ever. The reason I came today to comment it is that while reviewing the comments about another film I saw yesterday, I find that that that one was among the 50 best films in IMDB. While that move was good, I could not see how this one is not even among the 250 best.

If you are a father of children who moved away, or if you are a child who moved away from your birthplace, you will appreciate this movie. It applies to Italian immigrants, or to African immigrants in Italy (there is a scene showing them sleeping in cardboard boxes that shows how human is that experience of being alone in a foreign place). you do not even have to leave your country, as this movie shows, to find yourself trying to make it alone, and trying to make your parents believe that you are OK. Of course, like in every good lie, some help from the person being lied is also needed.

If you can rent it, or if you hear of this movie being shown on your local station, please see it. It will be one of the best movies you will se in your life. It is a 10/10 for me.

He lives in Trapani in the far west of Sicily and undertakes to look up all his five children around Italy to find out how they really are. It develops into an odyssey of constantly overwhelming human experiences, as his insight into his children's lives keeps opening up ever widening abysses. Marcello Mastroianni makes perhaps the greatest performance of his life, and he is curiously and appropriately matched with Michele Morgan in her last performance - this episode is brief but provides an oasis of refreshing relief in this heart-rending but magnificent story reaching in spite of all some very harmonising conclusion. The real underlying story is told in brief flashes of hints of understatements, and like Mastroianni you'll have nio idea of what it is all about until he finally has his children for a lunch in Rome, which was all he wanted but which did not turn out as he had imagined. Take care of this film, you will be in for revolting experiences that will not run off.

Giuseppe Tornatore is best known for the excellent, Oscar-winning "Cinema Paradiso," but unlike that film, "Everybody's Fine" is rarely talked about. One of my all-time favorite actors, Marcello Mastroianni (8 1/2, La Dolce Vita, Big Deal on Madonna Street), plays Don Matteo, an aging Sicilian father of five who goes on a trip throughout Italy to try and visit all of his children. This is a trip of revelation for Matteo, who believes his children to be happy and wealthy. Gradually, the truth comes down.

Throughout the movie, Matteo is haunted by dreams of a beautiful Felliniesque day at a beach in which a caravan of horses are destroyed by an ominous descending black balloon that also steals his children. This isn't the only thing in the film that is inspired by Fellini, there are a LOT of things in here that echo the great Fellini's work (including a shot of a bus driving by our main character, it's passangers with their hands on the windows glaringly staring at him...GOOD STUFF).

It's a very warm, sentimental film, and I thought it was quite wonderful. Legendary composer Ennio Morricone's extraordinary score fits the film like a glove.