There are many
sibling filmmaker teams, and I’m sure that each has their own unique ways of
distributing the directorial duties. For the longest time Joel Coen was listed
as the film’s director with Ethan taking producer credits, despite both working
together in all aspects of the process. The Taviani brothers, Paolo and
Vittorio, have a completely different approach. Although they always share the
director credit, each takes turn directing from one scene to the next, neither
one interfering with the work of the other. The result is no less seamless, as
can clearly be seen in three of their classics included in this Blu-ray film
collection.
The first film
is their 1977 winner of the Cannes Film Festival Palme d’Or, based upon an
autobiography by Gavino Ledda. Padre
Padrone tells the story of Gavino’s relationship with his sheep farmer
father (Omero Antonutti) who pulled him from school at the age of six in order
to help with the flock. Treated with the same abuse at the hand of his father
as was received by his own father, Gavino seeks to break the cycle by achieving
his own personal goal of educating himself and escaping to a life in
civilization. Once Gavino has grown to a young man (played by Saverio Marconi),
he is sent to join the army, which ends up providing him the tools he missed
when his father refused him an education.
Each of the Taviani’s films are
grounded in realism, tinged with moments of whimsical formalism to allow us a
glimpse of the magic behind the harshness of everyday life. Padre Padrone was grounded in the
autobiographical elements, whereas The
Night of the Shooting Stars deals with even bleaker recollections of a
small Tuscan town caught between German forces and an advancing American army
during the close of World War II. The fantastical elements must also be even
more pronounced in The Night of the
Shooting Stars, the entire narrative told through the eyes of the youngest
member of the town as a fairytale as recounted to her own children many years later.
This does not mean that the horrors of war go unrecognized, but simply showed
the young girl’s perspective in attempting to understand the events. Though the
adults were aware of the constant danger, the young child secretly enjoyed the
excitement of the adventure within the ignorance of her own mortality.
Kaos is the
final film included, and it is easily the most ambitious of the trio. With a
running time over three hours, Kaos
tells four unrelated stories and an epilogue, all adapted from the stories
written by Luigi Pirandello. The title is supposedly taken from the name of the
estate that Pirandello grew up in, though the stories vary in theme and tone.
After an opening in which an abused bird has a bell placed around its neck to serve
as a recognizable returning character flying us from one narrative to the next,
Kaos begins with “The Other Son.”
This first story is about a Sicilian mother (Margarita Lozano) who longs for
correspondence from her loathsome sons living in America while shunning the
decent one still living close by, for reasons only revealed toward the end of
the segment.
“Moon Sickness” attempts to lighten
the mood with a story about a man who begins to behave madly under a full moon,
allowing his wife a rather convenient opportunity for adultery with her cousin.
I find all aspects of this story rather distasteful, making it my least
favorite in the bunch. On the other side of the humor spectrum, “The Jar” is my
favorite of the stories, involving a battle of wits between a landowner and a
man accidentally stuck in the expensive olive jar he was hired to mend.
“Requiem” retains the themes of class and social order with the story of a
group of rural shepherds (not unlike those from Padre Padrone) who protest the
local landowner for the right to bury their own dead. And the film closes out
with a gorgeous cinematic epilogue in which Pirandello returns to his native
Sicilian town and is told a childhood story (not unlike the one in The Night of
the Shooting Stars) by the spirit of his dead mother.
Along with these films being
available on Blu-ray for the first time, The Taviani Brothers Collection comes
with a new two-hour interview with the filmmakers, split up over the first two
discs. The last disc includes the 2015 re-release trailers.
Entertainment Value:
5.5/10
Quality of
Filmmaking: 9/10
Historical
Significance: 8.5/10
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