Micitype Pretty Good

Aiden Melton The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

Sabah Hensley This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

Freeman This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

chaos-rampant There are very few things to say about life. There are a million ways to say it, but we come back to the same few items: living-loving to the fullest matters, with every force available in your body, being one with just this world, sensitive to it, alert. We have come up with a million ways to say it, because it's easier said than done. It is easier to think than do. And I think that anyone who is passionate about life and the art he makes has hit this limit, that when all is said and done, thought is like the buzz of a small mosquito, persistent but drowned in the swell of universal music.You have to let go at some point, what the old mystics knew as ecstasy. This is of course near-impossible to accomplish in the grind of life, which is why in the old days, they set apart time for ritual and storytelling - not as distinguishable as they are now, these two. We do so with cinema. And I value, above all else, filmmakers who make more than films, who set apart time for ritual dance that disembodies the self, mends consciousness into the air. Antonioni - Parajanov - Iwai - Herzog - they have all done this at least once.And even though I'm only getting to know Pasolini, I can tell that that he was a passionate man, a man of thought who wanted to go beyond thought, who wanted to be true to music as it rises from the earth and makes a mockery of our efforts to explain intellectually.Here is his attempt at a disembodied narrative, characteristically Italian.The story is that we follow two ordinary rascals on their round through the small world, father and son, both very Italian characters, rowdy, temperamental. In the neorealist mode of some fifteen years ago, there would be a single reality, one of hardship and human ruins, the journey would be one of simple, 'real' encounters, that used to be the conceit in those days, the unmediated presentation of life. Indeed, we start here from a 'realist' world and come back to it full-circle in the end with real footage from the funeral of a prominent member of the Italian Left, signifying the end of the postwar era of new hope.Inbetween, however, we have something else. There is a second reality that we slowly shift to, one of naked dreams, of ritual and storytelling, song and dance.Each individual performance is exhilarating. Each has its own air. The rock'n'roll dance - hip and youthful sashaying, 'tuning out'. The Franciscan story - earthy, good-humored religiosity. The lighting up of fireworks - evocative of spontaneous magic and roads. Being shot at from a barn - the silent comedies of Chaplin and Keaton. The scene of giving birth - Italian theater, circus, carnivals. Our two lovable dunces are not dramatic characters, they do not change. Rather, they are on screen, so that in moving through the world, they will reveal different facets of contradictory existence, all of them exaggerated in the Italian manner. They are in turn victims and oppressors, fools and sages, beggars and hedonists, defiant and obeisant, shifting in and out of iconography and roles, booted from one stage to the next. Their companion is a talking raven (Pasolini - disembodied from his narrative and made fun of), always spouting thoughts and opinions on religion and politics, which are promptly ignored; who would listen, when there's skirt to be chased?Being characteristically Italian means that the different threads are not layered together, we simply move from one stage to the next. We get beautiful but scattershot imagination, but it is redeemed by a powerful center. Human nature as the moon that causes the waters to wash out on the shore everything from a deep sea - good or bad. It's a sublime notion.And you just have to see this for the choreography in the Franciscan story; dissipating human landscape, to human buffoonery on the ground, to swarms of birds rolling in the sky. God as learning to walk in the language of birds. Wonderful.

Atreyu_II I never heard of 'Uccellacci e Uccellini' before, neither of its director (Pier Paolo Pasolini). I watched it now after, recently, this 64-year-old man who likes the film having recommended it. He gave the name of the film and the name of the director. He sort of explained what the story was, but he talks and talks and talks... one moment he is telling one thing, then he suddenly changes to something completely different. So I didn't understand very well what was the story about.I think this is a silly movie. Sure, it is well filmed, with nice cinematography, a nice soundtrack by the mythical Ennio Morricone (in this case, with Domenico Modugno singing) and some clever humor. For example, the bird whistles were fun and I found it funny whenever the crow was following those two guys and, for some reason, the way it walked was hilarious. The idea of the crow telling stories of franciscan friars is kinda childish, nonetheless fun.The stories themselves were not as fun as the talking crow itself, though. They have some fun at first, but then they become boring as hell, making the movie appear to be longer than its short 85 minutes. Plus, there were lots of moments when humor was clearly cheesy and much too silly for my tastes. The ending of the film would have been good if those two hadn't murdered and eaten the crow. Ugh, I can't stand animal cruelty! Pasolini considered this film to be his favorite. On that I can't comment, as I don't have knowledge on his filmography.

ANNIESCLAN-1 Pasolini carried three labels that implied some sort of political or intellectual curiosity and complexity: Marxist, atheist, homosexual. And, like a true politician, he created evasive films that choose not to elaborate. Everything in The Hawks and the Sparrows is a contrivance used to further deepen the myth of the film. I was silly to think that I could discover something about Pasolini by watching it. Instead, I was separated by WWII-era political ideologies and symbolic occurrences. Yes, that's right, a talking crow is symbolic of a Left-wing intellectual while Toto and his teenage companion act as the apolitical naive characters whose journey ends at the beginning of the film. And you don't have to be a gnostic to find out; Pasolini chose to insert text that reads "the road begins and the journey ends" at the beginning of the movie. The insertions of text are instrumental to Pasolini; they also inform the viewer about the bird being the Leftist intellectual.Yet, most viewers will learn to dislike Pasolini's textual interventions. We want to be lazy, and we want to laugh at Toto's gesticulations and facial movements as he does the impression of the woman who uses the dentures. We don't want to get a history lesson, or at least not on our watches. And, if the text was never in the film, we would be able to disregard Pasolini's symbolic implications. But, since he puts that text in there and tells us what to think, we can't just dismiss it. That text dictates, it says that, even if you had created your own conception of what the bird symbolized, you're wrong, because, "for anyone who hasn't noticed, the bird is a left-wing intellectual." Truthfully, I might've been more interested in the connection between the word "wing" and the fact that the character was a bird than that the bird represented some type of ideology.Did I not know what I was entering into? I bought the movie, knew it was directed by Pasolini, the DVD box was blue on the side, no, there weren't any missing steps. But, even with all of the correct preparation before viewing The Hawks and the Sparrows, it would have been alienating. Although we learn about Pasolini's political status through the actions of a bird, a hatted man and a smiling boy, we are isolated from Pasolini himself. Using politics is a great way for someone to sterilize something. And, in the expressive and vivid area of art, an artist is kicking himself in the pants when he combines art with politics. Can anyone listen to John Lennon without thinking of his political life? Probably not. Which is the same case with Pasolini.As negative as this review may seem, The Hawks and the Sparrows is one of my favorite movies. I love talking birds over Ennio Morricone music. They work well together, like pepsi and Chinese food. I don't know how Pasolini pulls it off. Man. If anyone else tried to combine a political idea with art, it would be like trying to match navy blue with black. Maybe I'm creating the wrong visual image here. This movie is fantastic, especially when Toto and the boy get shot at, making them run up mounds of dirt.

nnad I picked up this Pasolini film a few days back, and I must say it was something a bit incongruous for Pasolini to make. The film takes place in a barren farmland, where a boy and his father meet a talking crow. Thereupon, the film shifts to a local monastery where we see the boy and father as monks. Inch by inch, they have the ability to talk to birds (i.e. chirping and whistling) as well as communicating with them. However, these birds (sparrows) are suddenly being killed off by the Hawks, and the rest is history. Although appearing dull at first, the movie soon gathers interest after the interaction with the crow, but abruptly finishes on a demented yet humorous note. Not as graphic as his later film would be, even so there's a sick sense of style idiosyncratic to Pasolini; although "The Hawks and the sparrows" still seems a bit weird, as if part of the school of Surrealism. I've heard Pasolini made this film as an allegory for his personal eroticism, or an across-the-board motif for homosexuality. If that were the case, it's a very imperceptible one that is obscured by the film's visual aesthetics altogether. Nevertheless, it's worth a look, and most hardcore Pasolini fans would understand it for its existence and beauty.