ThiefHott Too much of everything

Kailansorac Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

Deanna There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Dana An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

lucasorriso This movie simply spoils a great character and its incredibly rich environment with a long series of pseudo-romantic inventions, a poor direction, and an awful Andy Garcia. Too many facts are totally invented, and alter deeply the personality of Modigliani, as well as the real course of the events, relationships, and even time line (Edit Piaf was definitely not singing yet at the time of the movie). Some scenes are ridiculous, and the large use of little cinematographic tricks (such like Modi whistling the Italian anthem, the "hollywood manual" competition applause, to name a few) lower the level to unacceptable. Fully disappointing.

secondtake Modigliani (2004)Wow, somebody besides Modigliani was smoking hashish when making this thing. It's incoherent, it takes fictional liberties that border on infantile (never mind trying to create an interesting story), and the acting and writing (basics, yes?) are strained and patched together. Stephen Holden is right, this is a movie about how not to make a movie about a famous artist.Andy Garcia? I can see how people find him handsome, and Modigliani was a lady's man, for sure, so that much works. But he isn't an actor with either subtlety or fire, mostly just self-consciousness. His girlfriend, Jeanne, who was supposed to be 19 when the artist met her, is played with surprising unevenness by the usually talented Elsa Zylberstein, who was almost twice that age, 36. (She does have a naturally long face, which fits the elongated look of the artist's many portraits.) And then there is an even worse fit, the man playing the short fiery Spaniard named Picasso, an Iranian-British comedian name Omid Djalili. He neither looks nor acts like Picasso, who was filmed and photographed so much we know quite exactly what he was like.So what is it about this film that makes sense? Nothing. There is snow in one direction and not in the the other. There is the foolish brandishing of guns, glasses smashed to the floor, hallucinations that play cheap cinematic games, an invented rivalry between Picasso and Modigliani as if they were the only two artists of note in town (this is Paris, 1917, remember). Oh, and speaking of that, where's the war? You know, World War I. Ha.So, Modigliani impregnates this young Catholic student, Jeanne, and shows raging compassion and neglect in almost the same scene. He loves poverty and seems to never really paint--except when he gives up halfway through and destroys the thing in a fit. (This is only partly true--he drew and painted like mad, but not destructively.) The light is often nice, his T.B. is neatly invisible until the dramatic final bow, and Paris never looked so tawdry and small. It's a shame, because it could at least have been brimming with atmosphere. Or, taking it another direction, the movie could have leapt into complete fantasy like Derek Jarman's "Caravaggio" or the inventive (and more accurate) "Goya in Bordeaux."I wouldn't recommend this to anyone. Anyone, not with all the better artist films out there. As a final note, even if you like everything I didn't, you'll have to keep track of the many side characters (artists who come and go like Max Jacobs, Diego Rivera, and Utrillo), and the put up with a pastiched together simultaneous scene of several of these painters all making their works for the competition, feverishly painting as club music plays in the soundtrack as if it were a high school football tournament. Good luck. The death mask at the end? That's for real. And the final tragic suicide, as well. The truth of Modigliani is far more intense than this frivolous thing.

B J The main assets of Modigliani are the spectacular acting, the beautiful camera shots and the great music (featuring La Vie en Rose and a beautiful Ave Maria interpretation). Andy Garcia does a wonderful job as the tormented Modigliani (he always does a wonderful job), whom everybody loves very much but nobody can help at all.Omid Djalili comes very close to the Picasso image I had in my mind.The story does not work very well, it is in fact a love story intertwined with a male friendship/rivalry. They tried to cram in so many characters into the plot that I sometimes felt at loss, and would have wished to know more about individual characters, respectively.For example, there is a scene in which Jeanne tells her father to leave her be and that she "recalls what he has done" already, a reference to her youth or early childhood, I assumed. I did not gather what he supposedly did.Then Modigliani also sees other women- has there been a break-up with Jeanne, I wondered or is it just his nature, and are we later on witnessing a reconciliation, the story does not tell. I did not understand why at the end, when Modigliani gets beaten up, his boy-self does not try to intervene, or reflect on the happenings, or why he did not try to urge his adult self to get going from the bar earlier, whereas he quite strongly interferes earlier, suggesting that Modigliani does not let Jeanne leave. The plot also includes many visions of Modigliani, such as the death of his friend in the asylum, or the conversations with himself as a child, which make a follow-up even harder. Although the runtime of Modigliani exceeds 2 hours, which I did not notice as the story captured me right from the start, there have been plot lines left unfinished.The movie Modigliani does not try to be authentic or historical, but rather captures the Montmartre, the Parisienne painters' everyday life and struggle in the '20s, seen through a beautiful and difficult love story and friendship.If you take it for what it is, a fictional, strongly emotional (and somewhat irrational) story based on some non-fictional characters, in a beautifully arranged setting and shot in a highly artistic manner, Modigliani is a wonderful movie and a worthy homage to the era and the great artists of those times.

Doug Thorburn "Do you know what love is? Real love? So deeply you'd condemn yourself to eternity in hell? I do and I have." So began Jeanne Hebuterne's narration of the story of her lover, artist Amedeo Modigliani. Few movies with obvious addicts at their center excite, but this one does - because of the ease with which we can relate to the codependent, Hebuterne (played endearingly by Elsa Zylberstein), who is drawn imperceptibly into the abyss. It's a classic tale of the seeming incomprehensibility of misbehaviors keeping close people off balance, making it easy to induce them to do things they would never in their right minds consider.Initially, Modigliani (played by Andy Garcia in a terrific role) is outwardly eccentric, exciting and charming. The visceral appeal and seduction proves impossible for Hebuterne to resist and she falls in love with Modigliani almost at first sight. Happy though he may initially appear, he increasingly becomes consumed by remorse when able to see what the aftermath of his misbehaviors has wrought. When his contemporary Pablo Picasso asks after an encounter, "Why do you hate me so much?" Modigliani responds, "I love you Pablo. It is myself I hate." Alternating fighting with charm and insanity with excitement, self-derision becomes evident: he tells Hebuterne, "I have nothing for you. I am nothing." When she responds, "So you'll just run away?" he bluntly states, "That's what I do best." And so it goes, with Modigliani apparently growing to believe that irresponsible behaviors comprise his real self, which he loathes during moments of lucidity, while Hebuterne sees through to the real Modigliani, who is brilliant and, likely, caring without the drug.Yet it isn't Hebuterne who tells him to stop drinking entirely; even Picasso suggests he "drink in moderation," which, as a person with alcoholism, he cannot do in the long run. It is Modigliani and Hebuterne's young son who tells him, "If you keep drinking, you'll kill us both." Although it seems an insightful observation for a child, other addiction experts (I say "other," because I've authored four books on the subject) have pointed out that child-victims see the potential for annihilation far more clearly than do others, including the spouse who is blinded by alcoholic charm and the decency they see underneath the muck of addiction. While Modigliani's binges are so apparent that everyone around him is aware of the problem, the cure - complete cessation - eludes.His most destructive behaviors generally involve periodic abandonment of his wife and child for opium and booze. However, knowing we cannot predict how destructive an addict may become or when (one of the themes of my first book, "Drunks, Drugs & Debits: How to Recognize Addicts and Avoid Financial Abuse"), we should not be surprised when at one point Modigliani is put into a straitjacket. Nor should we be shocked when he shows up four days late to paint a portrait of a benefactor, although desperately in need of funds. Later, pleading for money so he can see a doctor, a friend asks him to promise he will not drink it away. Despite his doctor's admonition that if he continues to drink and smoke opium he will not live another year, his lungs already at half capacity due to having had tuberculosis as a child, his thirst for the drugs is insatiable. In typical alcoholic fashion, when told to stop drinking and to concentrate on painting, the egomaniac created by the alcoholism responds that no one can tell him what to do.Some critics object that the movie is confusing, alternating back and forth in time with numerous flashbacks and what may be hallucinations; but this is analogous to the life of the alcoholic, who leads a confused Jekyll and Hyde existence. While Modigliani isn't violent toward his family, the psychological abandonment conveys the experience of many victims: verbal and emotional abuse does more damage and lasts far longer, perhaps because it's easier to leave physically and detach emotionally from a violent addict. This could explain the classically tragic end. Because alcoholism provides the most certain tragedy, tragedy makes good cinema and the conflicting effect on the codependent is, for once, accurately portrayed, this is one of the best of the overtly alcoholic genre.