Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Besides using the 'correct' light, the matching music , this movie is 'cooked' so well for me as for the feelings it connected me to....Being a Mediterranean myself , I identified 100% with the movie. For people like me who 'belongs to a community' and grow a part of it, it means a lot 'to belong'... even if we continue life in a different continent than our original town our feeling of this 'belonging' to our origin makes us who we are...For me,the director created a masterpiece...Each piece in the movie is a scene, a piece of life 'lived'. Actually in a better wording one can say: 'a piece of life that is sucked emotionally and not to be forgotten ever'..The cinema entrance with the kid , for eg, is an experience each one of us lived and Tornatore gave it in a very simple basic natural short way:)) The running of two kids at the end of the movie, the imaginary run of the main actor after the train, all this running process which actually leads nowhere and takes a whole lifetime is summarized super well in the words of the old guy waiting for the cigarette pack: he says 'it took a lifetime ' whereas for the kid 'it was as short as the drying of the saliva on the pavement'...Life is short and long at the same time. Being a part of a society with a common past, with generations that knew each other and continue to do gives life a delicious essence, a sublime meaning, a unique color and makes the owner of that life smile and feel himself that he lived 'fully'. and in this environment, he feels a kid no matter how old he gets....it is a wonderful movie for my part of the continent...I experience,experienced what the movie gives, gave...it translated my society...

For all the extravagance and circumstance, Giuseppe Tornatore's 2009 film Baaría certainly carries a nihilistic bite in its outlook on life and such things. I think it would be true to say that the film is one of an immensely colourful ilk, a film full of energy and brimming with a sense of guile in its darting on and off and away through various stages in a man's life – a life beginning in the 1930's and progressing well into the last century. The piece arrives with an eye on changing times; changing attitudes and shifting norms, but such items are not implemented by Tornatore until much nearer the end, by which time certain elements of the surreal have done a little too much in drawing our attention away from such a sociopolitical tract.It is a film telling a story of someone's life constantly progressing forward, and yet often finds itself looking back at times gone by with a nostalgic and tearful front; a film that peers onwards at the modern age of impatient thirty-somethings in their large, silver Mercedes-Benz people-carriers, hurrying their way around public roads, when it isn't looking forlornly at scooter drivers tooting and bustling their way through town. It seems the film wants you to realise that, believe it or not, there was a time when people would sit in a cinema and marvel at the fact the film they were watching had undergone a dubbing process. There was a time in which, if two people slept with one another out of wedlock in a room to a building whose front backed onto a street, superiors would go nuts and demand to know what was going on. This, as the rest of the road's inhabitants gradually left their dwellings and surveyed the ensuing madness; everyone in the zone shocked and a little appalled that two people would do such a thing. Modern-life sucks; and the old days, when people had standards and technological advancements were something to look on at in awe of rather than queue to buy since it's the next accessible gadget, were great.The sense of transition begins in the opening scene, a young boy in 1930s Italy (the titular Scicilian town of Baaría), named Peppino (Scianna, eventually), plays with his child-friends on one side of the road as his father and his own friends play cards on the other. He calls Peppino over, and the literal crossing of the road as he enters this adult space within which competitiveness and gamesmanship exists on a more developed level feels prominent. Fitting then, that Baaría would go on to be a film about progression and transition through the ages; from one thing to another, during which you're opened up to new things and often forced to leave old ones behind. At its core is Peppino, a boy of whom grows into a man and then an elderly man as the town around him grows and develops as the ages pass. It is a flamboyant, grandiose picture; a film aiming high in its beginning with the what might constitute as the birth of fascism on the island before progressing all the way through to the modern day whilst doing its utmost to encompass reaction to The Vietnam War; the rise of socialism; the coming of the Americans during World War Two; a marriage, three kids and a miscarriage happening to one family as well as someone's entire career in politics.Tornatore tells the story of an entire town and its inhabitants across several decades, but we're always more interested in the central character than anything else. What grates is the apparent lack of confidence the film has in its spreading of one's wings as widely and as all-encompassing as it does; the somewhat desperate attempts to instill a sense of the humane or of the emotional to proceedings arriving in the form of an array of slow, lazy tracking shots over the low skyline of the buildings in the town and across vistas to orchestral music. They are designed to evoke the tears on cue, but do not; instead, and if anyone was ever going to feel any emotion at all to anything, then it would have been this central story-line about love, life and death. On a similar tract of criticism, and for all of the aiming high Baaría does, some of the content doesn't necessarily feel like anything we haven't seen before. Specifically, the delivery of the content outweighs that of the content itself; in as much that the film falls back onto a sub-plot to do with one male character's bond with the woman he likes breaking down, before kicking back off again and leading onto special relations.Baaría is a difficult film to truly love; a film that we watch and wait for the golden moment wherein which it all comes together and we all genuinely fall for it before coming out applauding. It doesn't arrive. I admire the film for being confident enough to progressively unfold without any periodic subtitle popping up on screen informing you of what year we're presently in, this is a film asking you to take note of the surroundings; the real-life events unfolding around proceedings and to keep up to speed. In tandem with this, we enjoy how characters age without the aid of an edit when they leave the frame and return a little older; an approach I haven't necessarily before seen. In spite of it all, the blunt nostalgia of a veteran filmmaker doing his best to hark back to days of old grates more than it does immerses. We sympathise to a certain extent and realise that even a small, backwater place like the town of Baaría can succumb to the modern-age of instantaneous results and hustle and bustle, but the film's bare bones are nothing incredible nor original and while there are spots of magic, it doesn't do enough for a reaction that is any more resounding.

Bagheria, a Sicilian city, it is at the center of this Italian epic film conceived and directed by Giuseppe Tornatore, a native of he city. We were under the impression "Baaria" might have been a mini series, abridged for the screen by its creator, but we realize this was a project too close to Mr. Tornatore's heart. He has fared much better with other films, among them, "Cinema Paradiso" and "Malena", just to mention two of his best efforts.The film follows a poor family from the 1930s for a few decades. At its core, the Torrenuova family, a local family, the director must have known well enough to tell their story, although it could be his own people he decided to weave this tale around his recollection of them. One thing is clear where Mr. Tornatore's affection lies. Like most of his fellow Italian colleagues, they have always leaned toward communism, although Italian style, where everyone can declare alliances for the oppressed while wearing the latest fashions from Italian designers.Basically, what comes out of this 150 minutes film is perhaps the reason why most people from the area turned to communism out of their hatred for Mussolini and his oppressive fascist regime before WWII. The Torrenuova family had trouble making ends meet, sometimes going hungry during those years of the conflict. Peppino, the youngest son, is made to go helping a shepherd, as well as milking a cow for the people in town. His involvement with the political ideas were easy for him to follow, after all, he grew up getting the ideology from all angles.The film has an episodic feeling. Ideas come and go at a rapid pace, without being fully developed. We realize how things worked in that part of Italy. The powerful landowners controlled large portions of the arable land. These people were threatened by the advocates of agrarian reforms, and improvement for the peasants, so it comes as no surprise Peppino was not able to bring the justice he wanted to his beloved city and the rest of Sicily during his lifetime.The musical score is by the great Ennio Morricone, almost a sure thing to help any film, but unfortunately, at times, it overwhelms the action. Enrico Ludici photographed the area concentrating in its main street that is seen ad nauseum throughout the film, as well as some the rough territory in the mountains that overlook the city. There is an enormous cast with some good Italian actors. Francesco Scianna who plays Peppino Torrenuova as an adult and a middle age man does a fine job.One could only wish Mr. Tornatore better luck with his next work, perhaps a smaller, less ambitious project in which he could show his talent.

This is Tornatore's biggest effort in trying to produce a great epic movie the way Sergio Leone could have done. But Tornatore's epic is mixed with his own personal memories and feelings rather than being a more detached study and portrait of an age and a specific place, circumstance that has made some people compare this movie with Fellini's Amarcord. Given the generous parallels, I believe this is a really good movie, I enjoyed every frame of it, but the sensation is that it could have been even better! This may be due to the fact he tries to say too many things at once and such things are not necessarily all that well linked together, resulting in a weak plot. Morricone does as usual a good work, but not a great one, as no theme was in my head at the end of the movie (while watching it I completely forgot he was the composer).Anyway I really hope this movie will win some deserved awards as it is a great effort from a great master of cinema and, as Once Upon a Time in America, they both end with a laughter and leave the impression the whole story may be just a dream... this is ultimately what cinema is all about. 8/10