You won't be disappointed!

Boring

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

This is a fascinating film which you'll have to watch very carefully, since every detail, especially in the conversations, is important and vital to the very complex sieve of intrigue and amazing diversions into constantly deeper waters of metaphysics, relationships and complications. Formally it is an ordinary inquisition piece with a scoundrel of an inquisitor trying to come to terms with an impossible reality without succeeding, of course, while Gabriel Byrne is the scapegoat for investigating the truth and ending up with amazing findings, intolerable for their humanity and revelations of love. But the film is much more than just this meaningless investigation into an endless labyrinth of unfathomable heart secrets of humanity. The famous novel of the 20s by Thornton Wilder (sadly unknown and forgotten today) has been filmed three times, but Mary McGuckian from Nothern Ireland has chosen to take a very personal view and simply concentrated on making a masterpiece of beauty. Many can't follow the intricate turns and windings of this web of complications, but it isn't necessary to grasp it all. The point is the love and the beauty, overwhelmingly enhanced and embellished by Lalo Schifrin from Buenos Aires in his finest score of subtle sensitivity. This is a masterpiece of beauty of Mary McGuckian's and Lalo Schifrin's, and there can be no doubt about it, no matter how many get lost on the way in trying vainly to follow the details in this inextricable enigma of interwoven human destinies. This is definitely a film to see over and over again to discover new aspects and hidden clues to the mystery of love, life and death.It gives interesting associations, though, in its labyrinthine architecture to Powell/Pressburger's "A Canterbury Tale", another winding system of improvised labyrinths, and in character to Jane Campion's "The Piano" from New Zealand, another marvel of beauty and mystery made the more fascinating and effective by its amazing music.It was all filmed in southern Spain, but its South American character is genuine. The actors are all excellent, perhaps most of all Kathy Bates as the Marquesa, seconded especially by Pilar Lopez De Ayala and Gabriel Byrne as the honest doubter. Another clue to its understanding is its pictorial beauty throughout. In the beginning of the film there is a key scene, when the Marquesa visits a painting by Velazquez, from which she miraculously retrieves a beautiful golden necklace in the intention to offer it to her daughter. It's the one detail in the film which is surrealistic, but it opens the film to its marvel of pictorial beauty - the whole film is like paintings by Velazquez. In America the film was massacred since no one could understand it, especially not American critics, since this is a very European and most of all Spanish film in character. If you know anything about Spanish painting, you'll understand and relish the film. Another aspect is its metaphysical character, which you can't understand if you don't read the book. It's short of only 200 pages but extremely concentrated. You must wonder why brother Juniper is prosecuted by the inquisition for having just so carefully documented the fates of the five casualties, and the obvious reason is this: what united these people was only love, they were penitents for nothing but undeserved feelings of guilt, one of them being even a small child, and they were all looking forward to a bright future of a better and nobler life, especially the Marquesa, who had only loved and that too well; while the about 150 survivors, who had to follow the caravan crossing the river down in the gorge and therefore did not cross the footbridge, were in overwhelming magnitude less deserving of life. The inquisition found the insinuation that this could be a case of divine injustice unacceptably blasphemous , and therefore burned the book and its author. Well, the book and the author lives the more for that. Unhesitatingly 10 score.

Like a lot of Hemingway's work, The Bridge Of San Luis Rey with its emphasis on internal introspection is a hard book to bring to the motion picture screen. Emphasis here is on internal introspection.Thornton Wilder of 20th century America must have done a lot of research to write so well about Spanish South American colonial society. And the biggest strength of this film version is the painstaking recreation of that society for the screen. That and the main player's salaries are where most of the budget went I'm sure.In Spanish colonial Peru an old Inca rope bridge across a deep gorge gives way and several people fall into the gorge and are killed. Gabriel Byrne playing a young Franciscan monk who is right behind them by a few steps is spared when he doesn't make it on the bridge.Forgetting the fact that he is a monk and in a profession where much time is given to contemplation and retrospection, anyone would be wondering why he was spared. There are certain things in my life where I've wondered whether I was destined to be where I am and do what I do. But Byrne takes it to the extreme. He spends years investigating the lives of the people on The Bridge Of San Luis Rey wondering if there was some kind of cosmic connection. For his labors the young monk is brought before the Inquisition. Where as the Archbishop of Lima, Robert DeNiro makes a fanatical prosecutor for God. Watching the film I get the impression that it's not what conclusions that the monk Brother Juniper reached in his painstaking research, but that he was asking the questions at all. Such things are left to Heaven and we don't question God's will. Mere inquiry is the work of the Devil and the Inquistion knows how to deal with those who yearn for heretical knowledge and spread same.Such players as F. Murray Abraham playing the Viceroy of Peru and Kathy Bates who is a powerful noblewoman and one of the victims lend their considerable talents to this film. But with all the care lavished on it, this version of The Bridge Of San Luis Rey is a ponderous affair and moves at an elephantine pace.I'm told this is a faithful recreation of Thornton Wilder'w Pulitzer Prize winning novel. But some books are hard to translate for the screen and I think this is one of them. There is an early sound version from 1929 and yet another film from 1943 of this work. I'm curious now as to whether they were better cinema.

The Bridge of San Luis Rey is a drama featuring an ensemble cast led by F. Murray Abraham,Kathy Bates,Gabriel Byrne,Geraldine Chaplin,Robert De Niro,Harvey Keitel,Pilar López de Ayala,Geraldine Chaplin, John Lynch, and brothers Mark Polish and Michael Polish.Thornton Wilder's award- winning novel is given a lavish screen adaptation in this historical drama from writer and director Mary McGuckian.In Peru in 1714, a rickety bridge collapsed as five people were attempting to cross, forcing them to plunge to their deaths. Brother Fray Juniper is a Franciscan monk who has been given the duty of looking into the tragedy by the archbishop of Lima, and to learn what he can about the victims. It is Fray's belief that these particular people died for some reason, and that it is his duty to determine why God chose these five people to perish, while others in the vicinity survived. After five years, Juniper delivers his findings to the archbishop as well as the viceroy of Peru, as the Fray tells them of the lives of the troubled Dona Maria, the nun Pepita, warm-hearted Uncle Pio, street kid- turned-actress La Perichola, and others involved in the tragedy.The Bridge of San Luis Rey is a beautiful movie. The film's shooting locations are exquisite. The sets are stunning. The costumes are gorgeous. The actors are superlative.It is an intense philosophical undertaking that examines questions of faith, fate and chance.

This is a great story, a beautiful movie, with great stars, a good direction, good photography, but a BAD edition. There are two reasons why I think the movie don't work as well as I wish. First: Language. I don't understand why a movie which is fully related to a Spanish/South American history wasn't recorded in Spanish!!! It is terrible to walk by lost regions of Peru without listening to any single word in Spanish. And second: Edition. The story is a philosophical discussion of faith. It has lots of different characters, with its specific stories told in parallel, with enough material for STRONG and UNFORGETTABLE 3 hours of artistic and contemplative (reflexive) art movie. But the director made an option for fast cutting and edition of the story to a "compact" and commercial format. The result is poor. And most important of all: The soundtrack is one of the most beautiful I've seen in a movie for the last 10 years (at minimum). Lalo Schifrin is a great composer, an this is probably one of his best works. Does anyone knows if this soundtrack is available on CDs?