As an Italian who goes abroad sometimes, I was often confronted with people asking me how come I had not seen this movie. And I had pretty much liked "I Cento Passi" and "Pasolini un delitto italiano", and loved "Maledetti vi amero'", from the same director. Still, there was something in the way people spoke about this movie that made me doubt. Or maybe it was something about the kind of people who liked it.
While watching this movie you realize that there are three families that are involved in pretty much every important event in contemporary Italian history. One is more a collection of families, called Cosa Nostra. The other one is a peculiar kind of family: a fraternity called P2, which is ruling the country by now. The third one? It's the Carati family, of course! From the red terrorism of late 70's to the bombs of early 90's, there seem to be no major event where they are not directly involved. Does it seem an unlikely kind of plot? Well, if you package it as a neat and cheesy TV product it seems to work pretty well, given the amount of enthusiastic reviews and high rates it received here. Plus, it's 6 hrs long, so it must be good cinema, right? I must admit I was initially captured by the '68 scenes. It must have been the music. As the reel went on I quickly realized that the young rebels being portrayed were of those kind that made Pasolini stand for the police: well grown and well fed sons-of-someone bourgeois. But look, they're so open and tolerant with the lower class, they even have a friend who's not studying (Vitale).
The more it went on, the more I was appalled by the TV-ish acting (all except maybe Lo Cascio). Wanna look angry? Curl your eyebrows and talk louder, it will work. (SPOILER) I was soon emotionally detached from the whole thing to the point that I cheered when the cop jumped out of the window. And when the aging bourgeois Nicola calls the now successful builder Vitale to restructure the "casale" he bought on the Tuscany hills.. oh, my heart was filled sheer proletarian rage.
While watching this movie you realize that there are three families that are involved in pretty much every important event in contemporary Italian history. One is more a collection of families, called Cosa Nostra. The other one is a peculiar kind of family: a fraternity called P2, which is ruling the country by now. The third one? It's the Carati family, of course! From the red terrorism of late 70's to the bombs of early 90's, there seem to be no major event where they are not directly involved. Does it seem an unlikely kind of plot? Well, if you package it as a neat and cheesy TV product it seems to work pretty well, given the amount of enthusiastic reviews and high rates it received here. Plus, it's 6 hrs long, so it must be good cinema, right? I must admit I was initially captured by the '68 scenes. It must have been the music. As the reel went on I quickly realized that the young rebels being portrayed were of those kind that made Pasolini stand for the police: well grown and well fed sons-of-someone bourgeois. But look, they're so open and tolerant with the lower class, they even have a friend who's not studying (Vitale).
The more it went on, the more I was appalled by the TV-ish acting (all except maybe Lo Cascio). Wanna look angry? Curl your eyebrows and talk louder, it will work. (SPOILER) I was soon emotionally detached from the whole thing to the point that I cheered when the cop jumped out of the window. And when the aging bourgeois Nicola calls the now successful builder Vitale to restructure the "casale" he bought on the Tuscany hills.. oh, my heart was filled sheer proletarian rage.