Bea Swanson
This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.
Anoushka Slater
While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.
gavin6942
In a farmhouse in southern Italy, an old woman dies. Her husband summons their sons: from Rome, Raffaele, a judge facing a political case for which he risks assassination; from Naples, the religious and ideological Rocco, a counselor at a correctional institute for boys; from Turin, Nicola, a factory worker involved in labor disputes."Three Brothers" is based on a work by Soviet playwright Andrei Platonov and adapted by prolific screenwriter Tonino Guerra ("Blow-Up"). Assisting with the adaptation was director Francesco Rosi, who never seems to have quite achieved the world renown of other Italian directors, despite his highly-praised "The Mattei Affair". Joining Rosi at the helm is two-time Oscar-winning cinematographer Pasqualino DeSantis, who provides a higher quality look than your average Italian film.As a writer myself, what is most striking about the film for me is the adaptation. The original story is set in Russia in the early 20th century, and the new story is set in Italy in the second half of the century. That may not seem like a big deal, but the particulars are certainly quite different. Soviet Russia is in no way the same culturally as Naples or Rome. And yet, the story is flawlessly ported over.Arrow Video brings us an excellent Blu-ray. We have a brand new 2K restoration from original film materials. The key special feature is an archival audio interview with Francesco Rosi from 1987. Any scholar of Rosi will appreciate this conversation that runs over an hour. We also get a booklet featuring an essay by Millicent Marcus, a 1981 interview with Rosi and a selection of contemporary reviews. Unfortunately, there is no commentary, nor any interview with star Michele Placido, but this is still a fine release nonetheless for an otherwise neglected film.
Lee Eisenberg
Francesco Rosi's "Tre fratelli" looks at three brothers who return to their childhood home after their mother dies. The movie goes into a study of the dissimilar paths that their lives have taken them. Raffaele (Philippe Noiret) is a judge prosecuting individuals charged with terrorism; Nicola (Michele Placido) is a union leader who supports the people targeted by Raffaele; and Rocco (Vittorio Mezzogiorno) works in a correctional institute for boys. But even beyond the different paths that the brothers' lives have taken them, the movie looks at their relationship (or lack thereof) with their father (Charles Vanel). It turns out that only the granddaughter is truly able to bond with the patriarch.The movie is almost mystifying in its focus on this family. Raffaele's dream brings up the issue of what constitutes terrorism. But in the end, all sides are forced to recognize that they are still a family. The granddaughter seems to represent the innocence that the brothers were forced to abandon as they went their separate ways in life. The end result is a very thought-provoking movie, definitely one that I recommend.
kosmasp
And it tries very hard ... unfortunately it never truly delivers. The story as it is has many facets that are interesting, but it never really get's interesting for the viewer. While the actors seem to try to make the best of it, you never really comprehend, where all this is trying to go, what it tries to tell you. It's a shame, because it would've been a really good movie ...The downfall might be the structure (I can't really put my finger on it). Different time-lines that do collide, some interestingly some not so much. Plot threads opened, some resolved in an unsatisfying way and issues come and go leaving you a bit uncaring about the characters and their problems ... Well it's independent, but I still had higher hopes from this movie.
Gerald A. DeLuca
THREE BROTHERS narrows with ease the gulf between two creative approaches in Italian cinema: the drama of social observation and the poetry of lyric force. That any film-maker would be able to look at the problems of a modern industrial society with the sensitivity of a poet or a painter is a wonder in itself. That director Francesco Rosi succeeds so eloquently is doubly wondrous. But then this is the gifted creator of CHRIST STOPPED AT EBOLI and ILLUSTRIOUS CORPSES. The three brothers have returned to their southern home village after the death of their mother. The film begins with the magnified sounds of heartbeats on the soundtrack against the bleak images of a huge building with dark, knocked-out windows. When the credits end we are shown a hideous cluster of rats in close-up. It is the disturbing nightmare we have shared with the middle of three brothers, a worker in a boys' reformatory in Naples. Frustrated by his battle to keep kids off drugs and away from crime, he is the self-giving liberal who is losing the fight. The younger brother is a Turin factory worker, embittered about his working conditions and victim of a failing marriage. The eldest son is a sedate magistrate in a Roman court who is handling a case involving terrorists and who constantly fears for his own life. He also looks upon his radicalized younger brother as a threat, one of the potential terrorists he is struggling against. The Puglia village to which the brothers return is an impoverished place from which they have long escaped and for which each professes a hopeless nostalgic attachment. Much of the movie delves into the varying anxieties of the brothers at a moment of intense introspection. Their aging patriarch father, on the other hand, is a man of great dignity, calm, and simple religious fervor, an emblem of what modern society has lost. He reflects a diminishing and changing past that can never be regained. It is a past that the old man's little granddaughter, with her childlike fascination for the little pleasures of country life, becomes fond of. There is bond between the two that is one of the most touching elements of this film. In a way she is a continuation of her own dead grandmother's attachment to the simple joys of life. The film says that while the sons have gained something in the amenities of urban civilization, they have lost something as well, something vital and profound. They have lost their home, their roots, their traditional values. They lie on children's cots now too small for them. They are overgrown children in cribs, and their uneasy reflections take on the bitterness of regret. They had departed from here for the best of reasons and once gone, as the youngest brother explains, they became immediately homesick. What is in THREE BROTHERS? Very little, if you count. There is a death, a brief return to a hometown, a few memories and flashbacks, some jarring evocations, a child playing, a burial, a beautiful final image. Indeed, nothing much happens. And yet it is as though everything happens. From its poetic tableau-like portrait of life, death, homesickness, there emerges a tapestry of modern society, perhaps even modern man in general, that is as violently graphic as it is lovingly gentle. It is a work of art.
