L'Île de Pascali

This has been a favorite film of mine for years, for many reasons. The setting is a heartbreakingly beautiful island in the Mediterranean, a distant part of the dying Ottoman Empire. The photography by Roger Deakins is superbly understated. While its quite spare, lacking the over-detailed lighting of, say, a Merchant Ivory period-production, it is undeniably soaked with the warmth and specificity of place, very much an Orientalist painting (rather like the book). There is an immediacy to the look and feel of the film which adds to its historical integrity.

The casting is brilliant; all the characters appear sculpturally archetypal. Ben Kingsley is superb as Pascali, inhabiting the doomed, lonely, character completely. His emotional monologue/prayer to the sultan near the beginning and which ends the film are intoned like music. Helen Mirren is perfect as Pascali's friend, muse and as his unattainable virtue, the source of his fevered longing. Charles Dance (who always appears larger than life, even on film) is excellent as the archeological con-man who stumbles over something pure and is trapped by it. Steffan Gryff wields an immortal, cunning profile and along with Nadim Sawalha as the Pasha, behave and look like the Ottoman Empire's corruption made flesh.

The story is a seductive mix; a gorgeous setting blended with serious melancholy, punctuated by a minor adventure and all informed by a clear respect for history. Its a small story (as emotionally guarded stories invariably feel) but its a terrific film.

Pascali has watched, spied and reported his whole life for masters who are doubtless unaware of his existence at all. As this is slowly dawning on him he is suddenly swept up in an minor intrigue which crystalizes all of his wishes and hopes. He sees a chance for personal renewal, but to achieve it he has to overcome instincts developed from a lifetime of deceit in a petty, corrupt outpost of a dying empire.

Recommended highly.

Beautifully acted, wonderfully realized, full of sensual details & the sort of behavioral, moral, political, historical nuances you'll never ever find in american films. Gorgeous to view & review again & again.

The writer responsible for the schlock-shocker 'Fatal Attraction' takes an altogether different approach for his own turn as director, in an old-fashioned, anachronistic bit of foreign intrigue set on a small Aegean island during the last desperate days of the Ottoman Empire. Among the film's many virtues is one neglected in recent years: it actually tells a story, with a rich sense of time and place to help bring it vividly to life. Ben Kingsley is superb in the title role, playing a petty informer on an inconsequential outpost in the Sultan's crumbling empire, who becomes caught in the plots of various foreigners seeking adventure and opportunity during the heady, treacherous years just prior to World War One. The expatriates involved in his inevitable downfall (a metaphor, perhaps, for colonial politics at he time) include a beautiful Viennese aristocrat and a roving English archaeologist out to swindle the local Pasha. The story is simple, subdues and potent, with some unusually literate skullduggery making it a modest but memorable drama of trust and betrayal.

I watched this movie with a great pleasure. In fact, as a Turk, I didn't feel degraded or insulted even though the Turkish pasha and other Turkish characters are presented as a narrow-minded members of a decayed political system. Because, it was not totally wrong.

Ottoman Empire, named as sick-man by European politicians, was just a few step away from death. During that time, it was fighting in several fronts, trying to deal with threats against him, but no luck, death was inevitable. Pascali's loyalty worth appreciation, but as the movie showed us, there was no such an authority to honor him.

This is a great historical movie having perfect psychological and historical references, and every single person who enrolled must be appreciated...

'Pascali's Island' could have been made specifically by and for the Greek tourism bureau. The cinematography is so utterly gorgeous as to make this film self-recommending. If you are an addict of the Greek Isles then this film is a must-have for those long winter- evenings in the upper Midwest, or where-ever your winters are spent, when you need to see shimmering Dodecanese seas and opalescent sunrises and dazzling, golden sunsets. The views of the azure sea set between the white-washed houses on Symi and Rhodes, where this film was shot, are enough to make one give up the unequal battle and retire immediately to some beach-shack on one of those stunning islands.

Added to the glorious photography is an especially beautiful score by Loek Dikker, a very fine composer who first came to attention with Verhoeven's early film 'The 4th Man'.

Moving beyond the travelogue attractions of this film there is the under-stated and touching romance of the character of Basil Pascali, wonderfully embodied by Ben Kingsley in what could be his finest work since 'Gandhi'. His is a sad little character, acting as a spy for the last Ottoman Emperor in the dying days of that great Empire. The Greeks are about to reclaim their land and Basil is facing a dark future, until Charles Dance happens on the scene. Any further comment on their activities would spoil your first-time viewing so I'll stop. Dance is very good, as is Helen Mirren as the beautiful and decadent Viennese artist who is Basil's old pal and Dance's new love.

'Pascali's Island' is a subtle film, not for boys night out or the kids on a Saturday night. It's a thinking film set in a glittering location that creates a very pleasant marriage between eye and mind. Not so common a thing in the flicks these days when you come to think about it. That alone makes this repeatable viewing.

Highly recommended, especially to Ben Kingsley, Helen Mirren, Charles Dance and Greek Island fans.