This is to me the finest foreign language film to appear on American shores in many a moon. Gianni Amelio as well as the two splendid actors, Enrico Lo Verso and Francesco Giuffrida are to be congratulated for giving us this amazingly moving film about the human and fallible relationship between two brothers...a relationship laced with unabashed love (yet never sentimentally portrayed) that brings a feeling that these are two sides of one person...The older brother is intelligent, but illiterate and therefore enamored of education (a scene in which he hugs his brother's books through the streets of Turin without a word of dialogue makes a fully felt experience). His sacrifices to further his young brother's studies is brilliantly off-set by the ironic disdain that the 16 year old demonstrates...until he later comes to realize the value of his intellectual capacity.
The non-linear structure...set on six separate days, from 1958 to 1964...is completely in keeping with the curvilinear unfolding of the events and emotional reactions throughout this splendid film.
It's powerful ending achieves the exact right tone. I only wish that awful music that accompanies the closing credits didn't nearly jar my sensibilities out of the rich rewards of the movie.
The non-linear structure...set on six separate days, from 1958 to 1964...is completely in keeping with the curvilinear unfolding of the events and emotional reactions throughout this splendid film.
It's powerful ending achieves the exact right tone. I only wish that awful music that accompanies the closing credits didn't nearly jar my sensibilities out of the rich rewards of the movie.