That was an excellent one.

Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Bagheria, a Sicilian city, it is at the center of this Italian epic film conceived and directed by Giuseppe Tornatore, a native of he city. We were under the impression "Baaria" might have been a mini series, abridged for the screen by its creator, but we realize this was a project too close to Mr. Tornatore's heart. He has fared much better with other films, among them, "Cinema Paradiso" and "Malena", just to mention two of his best efforts.The film follows a poor family from the 1930s for a few decades. At its core, the Torrenuova family, a local family, the director must have known well enough to tell their story, although it could be his own people he decided to weave this tale around his recollection of them. One thing is clear where Mr. Tornatore's affection lies. Like most of his fellow Italian colleagues, they have always leaned toward communism, although Italian style, where everyone can declare alliances for the oppressed while wearing the latest fashions from Italian designers.Basically, what comes out of this 150 minutes film is perhaps the reason why most people from the area turned to communism out of their hatred for Mussolini and his oppressive fascist regime before WWII. The Torrenuova family had trouble making ends meet, sometimes going hungry during those years of the conflict. Peppino, the youngest son, is made to go helping a shepherd, as well as milking a cow for the people in town. His involvement with the political ideas were easy for him to follow, after all, he grew up getting the ideology from all angles.The film has an episodic feeling. Ideas come and go at a rapid pace, without being fully developed. We realize how things worked in that part of Italy. The powerful landowners controlled large portions of the arable land. These people were threatened by the advocates of agrarian reforms, and improvement for the peasants, so it comes as no surprise Peppino was not able to bring the justice he wanted to his beloved city and the rest of Sicily during his lifetime.The musical score is by the great Ennio Morricone, almost a sure thing to help any film, but unfortunately, at times, it overwhelms the action. Enrico Ludici photographed the area concentrating in its main street that is seen ad nauseum throughout the film, as well as some the rough territory in the mountains that overlook the city. There is an enormous cast with some good Italian actors. Francesco Scianna who plays Peppino Torrenuova as an adult and a middle age man does a fine job.One could only wish Mr. Tornatore better luck with his next work, perhaps a smaller, less ambitious project in which he could show his talent.

A Tornatore movie. Seductive, nostalgic, nice, childish. But, in same measure, boring on many slices. That is not very strange. "Baaria" is a confession. Honest, pathetic, impressive. Any detail, any image of shadow is ingredient of this filmed novel about himself. A ethic duty makes the director to tell a story with many faces, baroque clothes, heavy, hush and not sweet. But the key is in final. Twoo boys searching. And looking the essence of theirs run. Small peaces of magic, answers to dusty questions. In this moment, the life of humble communist is more than a page from huge library. It is heart of every hope and beginning of every adventure. "Baaria" is not another "Malena" and it is not phrase from de Sica. It is way to define a poor world as any text of a Franz Kafka. Words who must be lives. Theirs sons, theirs colors or face is more important than a masterpiece. A message in a bottle. Or legend of a warm/cold time.

Giuseppe Tornatore, the director of Cinema Paradiso (1989), one of the greatest films ever made, has made Baaria, a 150-minute long drama that spans more than six decades in the life of the film's lead character, Peppino Torrenuova. Based on memories of the Sicilian village the Italian director was born into, Baaria is an autobiography of sorts that documents the lives of people who have been affected by social and political revolutions of the last century, and as seen through the eyes of the Torrenuova family.Shot in Italy and Tunisia in which a full set of a Sicilian village was built from scratch, Baaria is visually captivating. Tornatore creates a feeling of "vibrant nostalgia" by having most of the scenes drenched in bright yellow as if memories of the past have been lighted up by a powerful flashlight. The film may be attractive to look at, but the lack of emotional power undermines the filmmaker's attempt to recreate Cinema Paradiso all over again.The most glaring flaw of Baaria that limits its emotional power is the uninspired editing rendered. It is ironic that even with such a long running time, the film has inadequate character development. The editing is such that the film is broken up into about twenty sequences of similar length and is merged together through the fade out-fade in technique. Thus, it is like watching a slideshow of beautiful images.The film is coherent enough for the average viewer to comprehend, but the narrative that drives the core of the film remains inhibited, as if it is involuntarily hiding behind the image. And when the narrative seems to pick up steam in some parts, and things get quite interesting, Tornatore breaks it all apart again. And again. It is quite frustrating on the viewer to say the least.Ennio Morricone once again creates a beautiful score that is slow and mournful. It is, however, let down by the film's lack of interest in connecting with the viewer. Interestingly, Baaria is a film in which the sum is more than the parts that add up to it. The last fifteen minutes finally reveals the scope of Tornatore's vision for Baaria, which until then seems like an enlarged postcard with stunning images, but without the words that would reveal the sender's emotions.While he seeks to look back into the past, he also wishes to equate a lifetime of memories to a split-second afterthought, highlighting the fact that time passes too quickly for us to appreciate each moment on its own, of which the medium of cinema can only suggest but not replicate. Through some heavy symbolism and instances of magical realism, Tornatore makes us aware of the medium at work.Baaria, for all of its editing shortcomings, appears to transcend them by the time the end credits roll. Unfortunately, the parts that make up the film still linger unsatisfactorily in the mind. Baaria is Tornatore's love letter to his hometown. It is done with lots of love, but sadly, it just doesn't come out as such on the big screen.SCORE: 6.5/10 (www.filmnomenon.blogspot.com) All rights reserved!

I found this film to be a mess. Granted, it was a sometimes charming and funny mess, but none- the-less. Tornatore goes for so many things at once that he misses on almost all of them. First and foremost, the piece is overly staged and deeply theatrical with actors giving their best caricatures instead of digging for real performances. Now we all know that Tornatore is a sentimentalist, and that's fine, as long as he can earn the sentimentality by making us care or feel invested, but he can't here. He can't seem to catch anything but the occasional clever set-up. This film was so technically ambitious and sprawling and yet it felt ideologically lazy. At first the overall lack of realism in the film isn't a problem, since the story is told through the eyes of its children and one child in particular. However, arcing across several generations and trying to encapsulate some very serious subject matter, such as the rise of communism in post-war Italy and the struggles of government against Mafia culture in Sicily, means that the movie's cartoon style quickly becomes incapable of capturing the heart of any particular idea or theme. The film moves frenetically along at the pace of a race horse, never gaining traction on a single character or scene. Tornatore lays down moments like a machine-gunner. There is no subtlety in anything, there is no attempt to get at any deeper truth or real moment. We are assaulted with fragments of memory. Now that could be an amazing experience if any of that memory resonated or if at any time I felt transported. But I didn't. I just felt tired and hungry for a story that cared about what was genuine about its subject matter as opposed to what was stagy. I walked out scratching my head. What does this movie want to achieve? Does it want to create a swirling hallucinatory memory trip ala Fillini's Roma or Armacord? Or to build a child's eye view of history as in Hope & Glory? Or explore Italian politics like 1600? Unfortunately I think it wants to achieve all of those things. And that's just too much for one movie to contain. So we get random stabs at the ideas of memory and politics and family and place, but nothing cogent or profound or even average emerges. Nothing emerges at all. For me this was strictly crowd-pleasing, soft cinema.