Word: toto
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Secretly watching these censorious rites, though not entirely comprehending them, is a little boy named Toto (played by a delightful discovery, Salvatore Cascio). For him, any moving image is the nearest available occasion for bliss. An indifferent altar boy to the priest, he is a passionate acolyte to the projectionist, who is quite literally the keeper of a flame (the arc lamps inside his machine), the cranky guardian of a mystery more awesome -- or at least more attractive -- to the child than anything the church has to offer...
...this alternative religion, Toto will rise from novice (as the projectionist's assistant) to parish priest (he takes over when Alfredo is blinded in a nitrate-film fire) to bishop (he becomes a director). But it is one of the many graces of Cinema Paradiso that it is content merely to observe the analogies between two faiths, not point up the conflict between them. Writer-director Giuseppe Tornatore's manner is gently reflective, not satirical. His largest aim, and greatest success, is to re-create the lost spirit of a vanished movie era: the late 1940s and early...
...from under parental disapproval, sheltering in the dark under the big, glowing screen, innocently absorbing its fantastic representations of faraway realities, surrendering to the belief that those realities must be true (unendurable to think that the whole world was as constricted as one little corner of Sicily was), Toto comes close to becoming a generational archetype, transcending the particulars of his own situation...
...Toto, I don't think we're in Cambridge anymore...
...Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore" suddenly became "Andy, I know we're not in Boston anymore...