Baaria (2009)

This is not a movie. This is a string of scenes, many of them photographed with remarkable, original beauty. It's a fresco of life in Southern Italy from the 1920s to the present. But there are far too many individual scenes, and they don't coalesce to form a movie.That doesn't mean that you shouldn't watch it. Quite to the contrary. A lot of it is really remarkably beautiful.But, unlike in Cinema Paradiso, the characters don't really come alive. It is not, unlike that masterpiece, a movie about people. It is a collection of often very beautiful images.A warning: the subtitles were often very hard to read on the copy I had. They did not stand out against the often very bright background.

Besides using the 'correct' light, the matching music , this movie is 'cooked' so well for me as for the feelings it connected me to....Being a Mediterranean myself , I identified 100% with the movie. For people like me who 'belongs to a community' and grow a part of it, it means a lot 'to belong'... even if we continue life in a different continent than our original town our feeling of this 'belonging' to our origin makes us who we are...For me,the director created a masterpiece...Each piece in the movie is a scene, a piece of life 'lived'. Actually in a better wording one can say: 'a piece of life that is sucked emotionally and not to be forgotten ever'..The cinema entrance with the kid , for eg, is an experience each one of us lived and Tornatore gave it in a very simple basic natural short way:)) The running of two kids at the end of the movie, the imaginary run of the main actor after the train, all this running process which actually leads nowhere and takes a whole lifetime is summarized super well in the words of the old guy waiting for the cigarette pack: he says 'it took a lifetime ' whereas for the kid 'it was as short as the drying of the saliva on the pavement'...Life is short and long at the same time. Being a part of a society with a common past, with generations that knew each other and continue to do gives life a delicious essence, a sublime meaning, a unique color and makes the owner of that life smile and feel himself that he lived 'fully'. and in this environment, he feels a kid no matter how old he gets....it is a wonderful movie for my part of the continent...I experience,experienced what the movie gives, gave...it translated my society...

I just saw it tonight and I found it unbelievably superficial and pseudo-artistic (or "superficially artistic" if you want). It seems like he couldn't stop "talking" and bringing in new themes and subplots into the movie, to the point that there was no point at the end! Just an endless blah-blah-blah-blah-blah! It was as if Tornatore was afraid this would be his last movie ever, so he had to tell us everything that's ever crossed his mind... Even the music seemed totally contrived to me. Trying to impress and move the audience at every single, boring, supposedly moving, scene. Tolerable for the artistic features (cinematography, scenery, costumes, etc.) but other than that long-winded and babbling. I would definitely not propose it.P.S. Oh, and Monica Bellucci's breasts make a cameo appearance for something like 10 seconds. How can you treat your actors like that? (And why did she have to accept this... "role"?)

Baaria is a good film. Let me get that out of the way first. It is however a bit disjointed, it feels like your watching a story your parents might tell you about there childhood and growing up. Snap shots, highlights only. And for this reason we never really get to know the characters or stories before it fades to black and on to the next chapter in the history of Peppino and his family.Apart from this i did enjoy it. It's typical Tornatore. In fact It's Cinema Paradiso, Malena, Star Maker and something new all in the one film.You can see why it is rumoured to be the most expensive Italian film of all time. The sets are impressive (most of what you see are sets and they're top class) the camera work is expensive looking, the extras vast. It's a BIG film.It is my opinion that Tornatore made this film with Leningrad (his English language long in development project about the second world war in Russia) in mind. He wants to make it with big money. For him to get it he needs to show he can deliver the goods when it come to big 'Hollywood' movies. Most of us Tornatore fans know he can Direct small intimate stories, with Baaria he has shown he can do expansive more complex shoots. If he's going to get that money for Leningrad i think he just needs to show he can do action. I suspect his next film might feature more action for just this reason. Then it's off to Hollywood Beppe.