Pieta – Kim Ki Duk

PietaOh, Parenthood! Toughest job on earth! How come the frailest ones are the most courageous ones in taking this job? But once a parent nothing can break them. This is how the legend goes. Reality goes in infinite other ways too.

This is how Pieta goes – motherhood knows no limits in self-sacrifice. All senses are externalized, relocated into the offspring. She feels only what her child feels and she’s numb to anything inflicted on her.

Ah, Money! Fairest offspring we’re all parents of. We pretend that Money has not placed our center of gravity outside ourselves, that we can live without it, that there are other things in the world that matter, our children, our friends etc.

Ah, Poetry. How nobody give’s a f*** about you so you can feel at ease and elegantly leave a blood trail along the highway!


Les Misérables – Tom Hooper

les miz
Les Misérables is one of the longest novels ever written. Reading is an activity that permits us to recharge and live a life between attentive reading sessions. Les Misérables, the musical, is almost 3 hours long with one intermission that allows the audience to freshen up with healthy gossip. Les Misérables, the musical drama film, is almost as long as the theatrical musical but without any intermission and obviously cannot keep the viewer’s full attention all the way through.

Starting with these superficial differences I can say the novel is better than the theatrical musical and the latter is better than the musical drama film.

I have to confess I have never read the whole book but as I said this can be a merit of the novel. And I’ve only seen the 10th anniversary dream-cast concert of Les Miz, never the show. But that concert that was mainly about the music with a static cast and chorus tops Tom Hooper’s bombastic approach with all that mad agitation of characters and camera.

Nothing’s wrong with the content and Victor Hugo can be proud there, “somewhere beyond the barricade”. But the form, is it really a musical?

As much as I appreciate the actors’ efforts to sing their heart out I think that every compromise regarding vocal score, modulations, amplitude, range and all those details composers stick to like freaks is a step away from the essence.

Les Misérables is a movie with actors who sing their dialogues the best they can. Their acting is good but, honestly, the professional singers from the original musical played their characters better with fewer acting techniques. I don’t’ think they’re better actors than the ones in the movie but I do think that the music was already composed in a way to transmit all the necessary emotions and all you need is to follow the notes, the octave, the key etc to get the wanted effect. Hooper wanted more than that, he wanted suffering to be super-visible and closed in on the actors’ faces so we can perfectly see the emotional whirlpool, so we can witness every tear thus the singing was forced into melodic whispering. Not necessarily a bad thing but, sadly, Hooper did not know when or how to make a highly recommended step back.

When the most intriguing character, Inspector Javert, is at the peak of his own tragedy and so is the orchestra, Russel Crowe is only half way there and that’s not entertainment! And that’s just one example when the libretto, orchestra and score are off-balance even though they’re correctly tuned according to musical mathematics.

My biggest disillusion was caused by the Thénardiers. I was shocked to see no real conspiracy or any other kind of relation between Bonham Carter and Baron Cohen the two landing far from the novel’s brutal and not close enough to the musical’s successfully comic characters. But is half their fault, they do act and sing poorly but also director, photographer and, I dare say, makeup artist and costume designer are all very chaotic when it comes to Thénardiers scenes.

But the fact that the singing does not meet the perfectionist requirements of a musical that is in fact an opera shouldn’t have been such a major issue if director, photographer and editor would have treated such a complex project with more patience and less over-the-top solutions.

The Golden Globetrotter I









To be continued….









They exit right, whence I came in.




“Mi ricordo, si, io mi ricordo”











Rampart – Oren Moverman

Sly editing and camera work, scenes twanging stretched to their emotional limits, hot dialogues and Woody Harrelson; these can make you go on watching mesmerized one of the biggest bastard cops on screen. Anti-hero concept is revisited but no excuses are allowed to sneak in our hearts. The system, the Nam, family issues, financial problems are used up generously but cannot equal a dirty cop’s pride, bullheadedness and stupidity. A tragic character impossible to save himself, impossible to be saved. He just simply can never ever allow himself to say “I fucked it up” or can he?

Il Conformista – Bernardo Bertolucci

There is a certain circle of, well, not friends, where I hear this repeatedly “one has to know how to place one’s self in convenient circumstances” socially and politically. Easier said than done, I always reply, because that implies some sort of self annihilation and that’s hard to do. Or is it not?

What makes it easy to blend in and what makes it impossible? Sometimes I think it depends on how familiar one is with one’s self. If you have no idea who you are it’s a walk in the park to annihilate your ego, identity, principles etc and to adopt anything else that keeps you away from social and political bruises. But knowing yourself in and out can serve the same purpose give or take some sleepless nights. For the first ignorance is required for the latter courage to face the mirror.

In both cases cowardice is the main ingredient or shall I call it self-preservation?

When history gives you a hard time, when all is black or white, no neutral gray, for some is safer to cowardly blend in than heroically stand out or even passively stand aside. The consequences? It depends on how the blending in game is played.

Il Conformisto is the story of anti-hero Marcello Clerici (Jean-Louis Trintignant) playing the game with absolute conviction.

Bertolucci tells the tragic story spreading pinches of humor along the way. The characters are placed with mannerist rigor in perfectly framed extravagant locations and interiors. Some use of strong color filters and camera tilting complete a delicate and elegantly decadent atmosphere.

It’s a delight, all is thoroughly prepared to light-heartedly enjoy such an atmosphere while contemplating conformity, cowardice, self-preservation, a perfect Jean-Louis Trintignant and an unforgettable Stefania Sandrelli “tutta letto e cucina”.

“Animula vagula blandula
Hospes comesque corporis”

“Little soul, you charming little wanderer,
my body’s guest and partner”

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