Sorry, this movie sucks

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

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

The fraternal filmmaking team of Paolo and Vittorio Taviani recall the closing days of World War II with mingled affection and pain, looking back at the fate of one small northern Italian village (ostensibly their own childhood home) set in the path of opposing armies. Combining their typically lyrical approach to storytelling with a remarkable feel for setting, the two directors follow a small group of villagers as they steal through enemy lines one night in an attempt to meet the advancing Allied troops. Seen through the rose-colored lens of memory, the Taviani brothers' episodic reminiscences take the horror (but not the hurt) out of battle, reducing all the bloodshed and rage to a poignant and distinctly recalled tragedy.

This film is an eye-opening look at Italian life during WWII. It reminds me of the stories my grandfather tells me of his life in 1930s Florence during the war, "We didn't have money for anything, not even water. The rich had it all." This movie shows us the sparseness of their lives, and the things that they still hold dear. There are scenes in which it is almost hard to watch, we are torn apart by the brutality of the war, but we are entranced by the people who are living through it. We meet ruthless fascists, and caring catholic priests and every moment describes to us the terrifying truth, and the hope that lets one continue. I could not imagine a more realistic, and emotional epic on the subject.

The Night of the Shooting Stars is the semi-autobiographical recollection by the Taviani Brothers of the night when a group of peasants in a small Tuscan village left their homes that had been mined by the Fascists to look for liberating American soldiers rumored to be on the outskirts. Set on the night of the Feast of St. Lawrence in the closing days of World War II, and enhanced by a haunting score by Nicola Piovani, the film is a tragi-comic glimpse of what the war was like to an impressionable child filtered through years of memory. It is essentially a series of vignettes combining fact, memory, and poetic imagination told in flashback by a mother recalling her days as a 6-year old girl named Cecilia caught in the middle of war. The film focuses on the nature of a conflict in which life long friends from the same village are often engaged in the struggle on different sides. Especially vivid is a scene involving a battle in a wheat field between the villagers and home grown Fascists, and a heart wrenching confrontation between the partisans and a father with his 15-year old son. There are many other poignant moments as well: a young couple expecting a child, the village priest who is a collaborator, and an elderly couple rekindling a romance started when they were adolescents. Night of the Shooting Stars pays homage to the tradition of neo-realism, but also includes surrealistic moments such as when the young girl sees the partisans as Greek warriors, while the Fascist who threatens her life falls dead, pierced by multiple spears. Though Night of the Shooting Stars suffers from overacting, its unique approach allows us to see war as a very personal experience with all of its sadness and cruelty. It was also gratifying to see Americans being held in high esteem, an experience we haven't enjoyed much of recently.

If you want to know how Italians lived and felt in the Second World War, how they managed the terror, you have to watch this movie. Have you imagined your neighbors collaborating with the Nazi-Fascist army? Have you imagined can't trusting in your relatives? Have you imagined yourself being chased and having to run away on foot for kilometers? Well, most of us have never faced this situation (some of us did) and this movie is one portrait of what Nazism/Fascism was to Europe.