bmoroncini

This movie is well crafted, though it is long and feels longer, like it will never end. The characters are well drawn, their interactions believable, and at times infuriating. Two city people want to retire into organic farm-life. They work as hard as the locals do, and put their personal plan above the will of the community that for generations has been in the valley they chose to live in. "it's my dream, it's my house, you don't understand, it's my life project..." A microcosm of colonialism. While the neighbors who act out of anger are truly unlikable, the real villans are the stubborn entitled main characters.

I am not sure what the people who are giving accolades to this film saw, that I didn't. I am quite an avid film watcher, and have no problem sitting through Pasolini, Bergman, or Tarkovsky. This film's self-imposed obstacles are not its slow pace--though the editing room could have been busier with cuts--or even the mundanities of the majority of its content. The problem is that we are given no info on these characters, except for the fact that the father is a sensitive young man, possibly dealing with emotional ups and downs he tries to manage through Ti-Chi and meditation, and that the kid lives with her mother. Their interaction between the two is caring. The father makes two mistakes and apologizes profusely for them, and the kid has lots of questions that are not, or can not always be, answered. I am not insensitive to the nuances and subplots of a relationship, but this was just too little for anyone to justify why, as an adult, the kid should be so haunted by that holiday. I kind of hated this movie, found it terribly pretentious and a bit too precious (what is the point of watching people sleep for almost one minute?). Someone here said "This movie hurts." Well, not for good reasons it doesn't. The performances were the only good outcome, but I still wanted to fast forward to the end.

I truly appreciate Bellocchio. His direction is dynamic and inventive, his topics always important. What I object to in this production is the portrayal of Aldo Moro as the pure among the bipolar and the corrupt. Moro was as responsible as the rest of his party for the political and social situation that created the conditions for the red brigades to come into action, he was not an innocent bystander whose life was all family and church. His hands were as bloody as andreotti's and it's a real shame that Bellocchio gave this one-dimensional account of his activities and of the reasons why the BR came to be at all.