Baaria (2009)

Instant Favorite.

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

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...

This is my third Tornatore movie, Watching "La sconosciuta" made me want to check out this director's other works, as I quite enjoyed that movie even though it didn't bring anything new to the table and the ending is kind of forced,but the over all flow of the story and how he reveals the protagonist's motives in a kind of chaotic way which demanded some effort from the viewer to grasp the plot. I had high hopes for Tornatore as "La sconosciuta" was miles better than any recent Italian movie I've seen,but the second one I watched, "Legend of 1900", quickly rendered my hopes to major disappointments, that movie made me vomit a little in my mouth, from the first moments of the movie I could tell that this was aimed for fat American overly emotional housewives, Oprah's drones for short, it was nauseatingly commercial, drowned in cheesy Hollywood clichés, boring camera work and over the top emotional scenes with sappy music playing in every second of the movie.The moment I saw that boy fly at the beginning with the cheap score playing on the background, I instantly knew "Baaria" is no different from "Legend of 1900", it has no soul at all, it is so irksome and unengaging I can picture the director and his stuff sitting around with their material on all these scenes, it is that bland. The characters are so hyperactive and over the top it's like all the actors had vibrating dildos up their bungholes, shouting and hoping around like gay little bunnies during the whole time.This is another fecal matter in audio visual form, this kind of lazy film-making abominations seems to be loved by movie fests audiences and organizers, another outrageous trend that plagues the modern Cinema as seen with the Spanish turd "Tres Dias" and the German diarrhea "NimmerMeer".Avoid like AIDS.

My summary line is actually a title of German movie, re-quoted to get the title of this one in (original title "Maria, He ..."). Both play in Italy, but that's it with the comparisons. Tornatore has the upper hand, not that you could really compare those movies. The one is an easy comedy fare (in the vein of the big fat Greek wedding output) and the other one is a mysterious look at a family and the 20th century as a whole if you will! Many unknown actors have been cast here, and if a somewhat famous face does appear it is only for a small role. Something that the director did deliberately. Although the real star might again be the music. As with almost all the films Morricone has scored, he has done a phenomenal job yet again.The movie as it is, is high standard drama, that as most of those movies who try to go through many years of a life, lack substance at moments. And while the female lead has quite a few scenes, there are still many question marks left at the end, where her motivations came from. Speaking of the end: It might baffle a few people, but it certainly won't be something you'd expect to happen. Well I didn't at least.

"Baaria" is definitely a movie to be seen. It's not Jet Lee. It's not Brangelina. It's a movie, not fast food. Tornatore has put all his nostalgia and memories in it. There is a lot to explore and to understand. The movie is full of interesting characters, there is a little magic too, with the old woman that appears just in pasta time. What we see is not the saga of a boy, but the saga of a whole country. Its run-time is more than the usual, 163 minutes, but once you get in the movie you won't mind unless you have Big Brother to watch at home. There is a bit of "Cinema Paradiso" in Baaria, there are bits that remind you of "The Starmaker" there is something of "Malena" too. But Baaria stands of itself. If you like Tornatore, this movie is not gonna let you down.