Word: rosy
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Directed by Francesco Rosi...
Screenplay by Tonino Guerra and Francesco Rosi...
These are the three brothers of Francesco Rosi's fine, gently stated but ultimately very moving film. Summoned home for the funeral of their mother, they must confront one another, the past from which they were once so eager to escape and, above all, the example of their father (played by the great French octogenarian, Charles Vanel). The old man exemplifies not just a different "life-style" but an entirely different, and doubtless doomed, way of being. Slowed, but not bowed, by age and grief, he is a farmer whose rhythms have been set by the wheel...
...present it to her grandfather. She alone among the visitors will cry for the dead woman and elicit answering tears from her grandfather. Thus do the innocence of childhood and the simplifying wisdom of age find common ground, and strike a sweet, clear note of hope, quite unsentimental as Rosi understates...
...saying that the simpler the life people lead, the more resistant it is to the forces of change, even when those forces are backed by coercive power. Forty-five years deeper into the 20th century, it would have been easy to romanticize the simple, patient people exemplifying that point. Rosi does not do it. He draws them with full dimensionality, verve and gentle irony. And with a sympathy that never veers into noble-peasant sentimentality. In this cut, Levi's story seems to rush rather suddenly to a conclusion, but even so it is well worth attending...