Synopsis: Tracing a couple of years in the Algerian resistance of the 1950s.

I’ll admit that I was really not looking forward to revisiting this film; my memory of it was that it was dull and completely overrated. Well, I didn’t exactly love it this time around, but at least I can say that I’m no longer baffled by the film’s enduring popularity. It just goes to show you that it’s sometimes a good idea to revisit certain films; I’m not sure why my opinion on this film changed. Maybe I was just in a weird mood the first time I watched it, or perhaps my tastes have changed over the years. It’s funny, because the opposite thing happened when I revisited Amarcord — I liked it on my first viewing, but not so much on my second.

I can see why I didn’t particularly like this film the first time around; there aren’t really any characters, or at least none that we get to know beyond their politics, and there isn’t much of a narrative to speak of. But there’s something oddly fascinating about watching the minutia of the revolution unfold. It probably helps that I watched a film called Outside the Law at this year’s TIFF, which also dealt with the Algerian resistance, and which gave this film some added context that it wouldn’t have otherwise had.

I’m still not sure that this is the all-time classic that many make this out to be, but it’s definitely an interesting film. Pontecorvo’s gritty, documentary-like style suits the movie well, and there are some pretty great moments here — for instance, a tense sequence in which three Algerian women disguise themselves as Westerners in an attempt to get through a checkpoint with bombs. The ending is oddly abrupt, though the more I think about it, the more I think it works.

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Synopsis: A year in the life of a small town in Italy in the 1930s, focusing mainly on one family.

Hmmm… I guess I just don’t like Fellini very much. Of the handful of his films that I’ve seen up to this point, I don’t think I’ve really liked any of them (I do remember liking Satyricon, but that was a while back, and is far from being one of the man’s most revered films). It comes as a bit of a surprise to me, because Fellini is one of those directors you’re supposed to like pretty much by default, at least as a film geek. And yet I don’t seem to particularly enjoy his movies.

I mentioned in my 8½ post that I remembered liking Amarcord — but I can’t say that I was particularly enthralled this time around. My first viewing was probably around ten years ago, and I’m pretty sure that I liked it. I don’t know why my opinion has seemingly changed; I guess I used to have a higher tolerance for handsomely made, meandering and egregiously slow-paced films.

Like 8½, I was definitely able to appreciate this film on a technical level, but I just didn’t derive all that much enjoyment from it. The movie was essentially a series of vignettes revolving around the inhabitants of a small Italian town; it kind of had a laid-back charm — and Nino Rota’s jaunty, memorable score was a perfect accompaniment to the visuals — but to be perfectly honest, after about fifteen minutes or so, I was sick of it. Almost none of the segments stood out to me as being anything other than a mild diversion. I’m sure they all had some kind of special significance to Fellini (the film is loosely based on his own childhood memories), but to me, watching them wasn’t much more interesting than going through somebody else’s old photo album (albeit an album presented with a fairly high level of visual flair).

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Synopsis: A beleaguered director starts pre-production on his latest film while going through a mid-life crisis of sorts.

I’m about to say something that you’re probably not going to agree with. No point in beating around the bush, so here goes: I don’t like 8½. That’s not to say that I hate it; there are some classic films where the appeal just completely eludes me, and that’s certainly not the case here — this is an exceptionally well made movie, and I can definitely see why someone might love it. But it just didn’t connect with me. I don’t know why. I won’t say I was bored, but I wasn’t exactly riveted.

One thing that I can unequivocally say about this film, despite my feelings on the movie as a whole, is that Federico Fellini’s direction is really top-notch. This is an amazingly good-looking film, and almost every frame looks great. Even when I wasn’t necessarily enthralled by the film itself, I was at least able to appreciate what Fellini had achieved on a visual level.

But… I don’t know, the movie itself I just found kind of dull, despite Fellini’s striking direction, and despite the presence of Marcello Mastroianni, who is one of those actors who can liven up a scene without even saying a word. I’ve liked some of Fellini’s other movies (in fact I’ll soon be revisiting Amarcord, which is a film I remembered enjoying), and this is, by most accounts, his masterpiece. Many call it one of the best movies of all time. And yet it just doesn’t do much for me. Oh well. I’m sure there will be a third viewing at some point in my future. Maybe I’ll like it better then.

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Synopsis: Following the lives of two men in Italy — one rich, one poor — from their childhood in the early years of the 1900s to the fall of the Fascist party at the end of WWII.

I’m going to admit that I actually received this movie from Zip.ca way back in January, and it has been sitting on my desk ever since, collecting dust and just waiting to be watched. I’ve seen this movie once before, and I remembered liking it a lot, but how often do you feel like sitting down and watching a five hour Italian epic (five hours and fifteen minutes, to be precise)? Of course, the obvious solution would be to watch it over two nights — it’s even broken up over two discs, which would make deciding when to stop watching remarkably easy. But that just feels like cheating to me, and so the movie sat around unwatched for months, waiting for me to be in the right mood.

The sad thing about my reticence is that this is a really good movie, and I knew that since I’d seen it before — though the only thing I really remembered from my first viewing was the scene in which Donald Sutherland kills a cat by headbutting it (with a running start, no less), in order to illustrate the proper way to deal with the perils of communism. It’s kind of hard to forget something like that.

Yes, the movie is super long. Almost absurdly long. And yet it somehow justifies its length far better than American Graffiti, which was under two hours and still felt way longer than it needed to be. The length allows you to spend such a long time with the characters — from their childhood all they way through to their middle age and beyond — that you really get a sense of knowing them that would simply be impossible from a shorter film. Many of the characters, De Niro’s in particular, undergo transformations that could have easily seemed forced in a shorter movie, but seems completely natural given the scope that Bertolucci chose to work with.

Bertolucci, working with famed cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, creates a film that is really beautiful to look at. And of course, the performances are all quite good; De Niro in particular does a really great job of making his character subtly change as he grows older. Really, I don’t have many complaints about this film. Some of the characters tend to be a bit simplistic, either being clearly good or clearly evil, without many shades of gray (ie. Donald Sutherland’s cat-headbutting Fascist). Also, the actors in this film all spoke their own languages (Depardieu spoke French, De Niro spoke English, etc.) and were dubbed over in post. The DVD has an English track, an Italian track and a French track, which means that it’s impossible to watch the film and hear all the actors speak with their own voices. I chose English because I wanted to hear De Niro speak since he’s the main character, but it wasn’t exactly ideal.

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Synopsis: A girl goes missing while on a boating trip with her friends; her boyfriend and lover search for her, falling in love in the process.

I have somewhat of a love/hate relationship with Michelangelo Antonioni. On one hand, the man was an impeccable director and made films that are almost always beautiful to look at. On the other hand, entertainment value was clearly not paramount among his filmmaking goals, and pretty much all of his films can be tough to sit through at times (to put it charitably). So despite the fact that I’ve never quite been entertained by an Antonioni film, I keep seeking them out. I guess he was just such a master filmmaker that it’s easy to find something to appreciate in his films, even when you’re essentially bored to tears.

I actually wound up watching this film over three days — I rarely, if ever, interrupt a film once I start watching it, but… well, I started watching the film, got about an hour into it and then thought “you know what, I’m going to take a quick break just to check my email.” I couldn’t bring myself to finish it that night. I think the fact that I had already seen it kind of lessened the urgency to finish it immediately. So the next day I hunkered down, and told myself that I was going to watch the rest of the movie break-free. After about forty minutes I fell asleep. I woke up a couple of hours later in a daze, and found that I had at least had the foresight to pause the movie before my snooze, though my memory of actually doing so was hazy at best. I was pretty sleepy at that point, and there was no way I was going to be able to sit through another forty minutes of Antonioni in that state, so I put it off for the next day. The next day I finally finished it.

I think it probably goes without saying at this point that L’Avventura does not make Speed look like a slow ride to grandma’s house. I’d probably even go so far as to describe it as boring, though I think that word is a bit too derogatory since I would ultimately recommend this film — to certain people at least. If you consider yourself to be serious about cinema at all, then you need to see this film. But if you’re the type of person who goes to the movies once or twice a year and occasionally heads to Blockbuster to rent a movie or two — yeah, you can easily go the rest of your life without watching this movie. It’s absolutely beautifully made with stunning black and white cinematography, and it is kind of compelling in its own strange way, but it isn’t entertaining in the traditional sense at all. Not even a little bit.

It’s kind of odd, because my general philosophy on cinema is that, no matter what a director is trying to say or how noble his intentions are, a film’s first purpose should be to entertain — it doesn’t matter how insightful, artfully-crafted, etc. a movie is, if it isn’t entertaining then it is almost invariably a failure. And there is no doubt that Antonioni wasn’t concerned at all with making his films enjoyable in a traditional sense. And yet I do consider myself a fan of his, and would recommend his films (though, as I mentioned before, not to everyone). It’s odd. I think watching an Antonioni film is kind of like being forced to eat vegetables as a kid — you’re not necessarily going to enjoy it, but you will be enriched by it.

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