Pater familias (2003) User Reviews

Could Have Been;Has Certain Merits not to be Overlooked

[Cristi_Ciopron · 7/10 · 31 May 2008]

I think that this film lacks true synthetic force and energy; on the subject's level,it is honest and straight enough; but on the technique's, it is pretentious, fastidious, mannerist, unnecessarily diluted by extrinsic devices. It should of looked like "Kane";instead,it looks like gritty MTV.These technical concessions are displeasing.

I demand some creative brio even from a sordid story. Sordidness is no excuse for telling a story in such an unnecessary and ridiculously oblique way.

Controversially enough, it is perceivable in this movie a certain tendency towards giving _aestheticizing shapes to some dark facts—e.g., the brutal sex (wife raped in the kitchen, sister raped, etc.).There is a certain decadent aesthetics of the damned here.

One might conclude that I am for linearity only in the cinema. This is wrong,as my earlier reference to "Kane" proves it.But I am for a reasoned approach. Stick to linearity,if you can not manage else!Linearity is to be dropped only if something better is available.

Yet this flick certainly has its merits—in providing a glimpse of a world most do not want to acknowledge it exists.In a certain way,its naturalism is successful, tough. As a secondary aspect, the role of the old priest—seizing, in a spontaneous manner, the place of the priest in the world—and reconsidering the too easily despised Western notion of the priesthood. Today,when most seek rather a guru than a priest, it is fair to see a movie conscientious of the Western priests' good work—and of the normality of this direction. As a matter of fact, the nun, the priest are oasis of normality and balance in the slum's inferno.

Without the technical experiments, pointless and meaningless, the movie would have been good.It had the material; it did not have though the vision and sharpness.

One of the best films of the era, a tour de force return of the spirit of Pasolini

[roboy3 · 10/10 · 2 March 2009]

The best way to sum up this film is this: If Pasolini had gone through a "Cubist Period," this is the film he would have made. Far from not understanding the subversion of linearity, this film masterfully squares linearity. In other words, it is remarkably easy to make the story go forward with a series of flash backs. That is a simple 1-2 structure. This film goes forward, flashes back, then flashes forward but changing the point of viewing of the past events--all of which are leading up to the present.

If that sounds complicated, the plot delivers it clearly but in a way that demands the audience to think about the relationship between time and point of view.

The film is a relentless examination of the pathology of Southern Italian underclass culture--hence its evocative sense of Pasolini. It centers around boys turning into men, but doomed because the men in their lives are completely dysfunctional--the men have never grown up, they only think they have. Like Pasolini, the underclass is not on display for the middle-class to condemn: that all the characters are doomed is tragic, and indicts all of Italian culture, not the underclass itself. Clearly, however, it also avoids romanticizing the underclass (nobody could accuse this film of romanticizing the underclass).

It is a shocking film in many respects. The utter violence and dysfunction of this subculture and its enabling by the socialist state is troubling to say the least. The representation of contemporary religious life also comes as a bit of a shock. Especially in Italy, where religious communities are more readily able to cling to the traditional, Pre-Vatican II mode, a film representing a contemporary nun involved in the work of social justice is a unique turn. Further, it prevents the film from slipping into absolute hopelessness and depressiveness. Anyone can make a depressing and hopeless narrative--either about society or existence--call it a "confrontation of bourgeois tastes" and expect art-house accolades. This film does not take that route. Instead it compels the viewer to follow its probing investigation because it holds out the promise of hope. Perhaps there is finally a film-maker who has read Ernst Bloch.

That the film ends with a howl of hopeless protest does not so much function to conclude that all is lost, but rather, to suggest the point of collapse for this sub-culture and the dominant patriarchal culture which only fleetingly attends to it.

Not to be considered a follow up for "Cinema Paradiso," "Mediterraneo," or "Il Postino." Neither is it a good date film, but it is a very compelling film and a must see for anyone interested in Italian Cinema.