Strong and Moving!

Please don't spend money on this.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

Richard Roxburgh has picked a difficult story to tell through a motion picture. For a first timer, he doesn't do a bad job. Through his cinematographer, he captures the raw Australian landscape beautifully and contrasts it well with the 'depression' of that time. He extracts phenomenal performances from his actors. He also displays the subtle layers quite effectively and seems to have an understanding of how difficult things were during that time. The only problem is that 'Romulus, My Father' moves at an extremely slow pace and some of the events appear patchy rather than smooth. Eric Bana does an excellent job. Marton Csokas is superb. Franka Potente handles a difficult role with élan. Child actor Kodi Smit-McPhee is terrific as Rai who is torn between his parents. The background score has a subtle effect. 'Romulus, My Father' reminded me of 'Angela's Ashes' but in my opinion, the latter remains a superior film.

A broken family have a growing boy at his early teenage years and have no sense of responsibility to grow a child. Considering that both mother and the father is uneducated and clueless, they live in a farm before the World War II; we still have no idea upon why they ruin a child's life making a havoc of his psychology.Proved by adversity the family have nothing to distinguish their boy, nor to give anything to make him happy, nor to teach him anything precisely good. Father gets to figure out that the kid needs a college education, and sends him to a college. Then after the suicide of the mother, the boy gets closer to his father. A happy ending occurs and mops up all the pain and unpleasant situations out of the movie, and hopefully out of the boy's memory. Thus, his father taught him one thing, a very important one, how to be patient of adversity.For a tough story to put on silver screen, the actors' performances are somewhat exhilarating; and that's the mainspring to tolerate this movie. Within low-budget movies with no technical endeavors, if you like to witness a modest triumph of a child, much better than My Father Romulus, I advise you to watch "I am David".

"Romulus, my father" is not the history of a problematic family but it could be considered as a documentary of how difficult was the fight against the depression, and the consequent effects, in a period without cures. A little family of immigrants has to clear big hurdles in order to guarantee the right education for their young son. But it does not exist a right education and, probably, it does not exist a right love. We are always alone in front of big obstacles. The slow narration well represents the darkness lived by the characters. Only in the end there is a new light for new dreams: after years of cupidity, after weepings and crisis, after funerals and weddings, father and son can hope again, still together.

The book was a favorite in our house, and the locales were my childhood home area. While I thought Richard Roxburgh followed Raimond Gaita's book pretty faithfully; that the cinematography was splendid; and that there were fine acting performances by Kodi Smit-McPhee and Eric Bana, overall it came up short for me.The reason: the dialogue was simply too sparse. I could be corrected, but I can't recall any scene where more than two, perhaps three very short sentences were exchanged. Throughout, people hardly spoke - the result being that it relied too heavily on languorous, meaningful looks and pregnant silences. And I agree with a criticism voiced elsewhere on this film's site, that this is a hallmark of Australian films, an over-used indulgence.How I suffered that watching Rowan Woods's endless lingering facials of Cate Blanchett in 'Little Fish' last year. Its a great face and she's a great actress - but the treatment just drove me to distraction in that case.Boring! Returning to 'Romulus, My Father,' it's just a personal view, but I thought some selective voice-over narration by the boy Raimond would have assisted the film's sense of movement a great deal, filled some of the gaps, added depth, and assisted an uninitiated viewer's appreciation of the themes,personalities and relationships. At least it would have given some more human voice to a very human story.In summary, I felt it was not a bad film - that it came close to being very good. But it's flawed, and again in a way that so many Australian cinema releases are.