Thanks for the memories!

Simply A Masterpiece

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

This Italian film is one I read about in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, the title made it obvious what the main subject was, but the story I did not know, I hoped it would be good, directed by Francesco Rosi (Christ Stopped at Eboli). Basically in southern Italy, the matriarch of the Giuranna family dies in the farmhouse, her husband summons their three sons from Rome to prepare for the funeral, each of whom are facing difficult personal problems. The first son, Raffaele (Philippe Noiret), is a courtroom judge presiding over a terrorism case, at risk of assassination he is in constant fear for his life. The second son, Rocco (Vittorio Mezzogiorno), is a religious man who lives in Naples, he works as a counsellor at a correctional institute for boys, hoping to achieve his dream of helping troubled teenagers. The third son, Nicola (Michele Placido), lives in Turin and works as a factory worker, he is involves in a labour dispute and his marriage is failing. Each of the men grieve for the loss of their mother in their own way, while also grappling with the other emotional issues that are pressing on them. The three brothers encounter the past and contemplate things that may come: Raffaele imagines himself dying, Rocco dreams of helping youths of Naples out of violence, drugs and corruption, and Nicola pictures himself and his wife and embracing, meanwhile the old man and his granddaughter take care of the farm and grieve together. Also starring Charles Vanel as Donato Giuranna and Andréa Ferréol as Raffaele's Wife. I understood the main plot of the story with a family of three brothers and the father brought together for the funeral of the mother, but I agree with critics it is perhaps overloaded with other topics about age gaps, marriage trouble, terrorism, politics, and of course death, overall it certainly engages you enough however that makes an interesting enough drama. Worth watching!

"Three Brothers" (Italian, 1980): An extremely melancholy movie – more like the depression of a Swedish film or the ennui of a French film, than anything typically Italian. Three estranged brothers receive word their Mother has died. Daily lives are put on hold, and each heads to the "country" for the funeral, their Father, and to reacquaint with one another in the village of their childhood. The three are shown in forgiving contrast to their Father, one of the son's daughters, and the old family dog. Think of this movie as a trim, non-commercial, patient, personal, very thoughtful "Big Chill". The scoring was perfectly sad and delicate throughout…you will not want to get up and dance. However, unlike a Swedish film, "Three Brothers" does slowly reveal glimmers of acceptance and hope.

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.

An old man goes to the telegraph office and transmits the news of the decease of their mother to his three sons, who live scattered all over Italy. So much for the initial situation, which Rosi has taken from a Platonov story.The sons, who then arrive one by one in the South Italian village of the father, are far apart from each other, not only concerning their age. They have also taken completely different roads in their professional careers and in their spiritual developments. The first one, a judge, has to deal with terrorist cases and every day has to reckon with being killed cold-bloodedly by the mafia. The second one could almost be one of the terrorists himself, at least he strives for societal changes, being a worker and a trade union member. The third one has dedicated his life completely to the fulfilment of utopian educational targets and looks after maladjusted juvenile delinquents in a boarding school.The Italy presented by Rosi is as disunited as the chosen family. It is not only geographically split into two incompatible halves, the North and the South, but also sociologically into different classes that stand facing each other irreconcilably. But "Tre fratelli" has more to offer than just regional or social conflicts. Life itself becomes the center of attention, apart from the three brothers, who represent middle age, also the old father and his eight-year-old grand-daughter are dominating protagonists. These two are able to form a curious alliance of old age and youth, whereas the brothers are just talking at cross purposes in senseless discussions and only reach a sentiment of unison through the mourning at their mother's funeral.The little girl wants to know a lot about the past, and the old man is willing to remember. He finally recalls the perhaps most blissful moment of his life: Shortly after his wedding he accompanies his wife to the beach, where they both enjoy a short spell of light-heartedness, just before the hard struggle of earning one's living will demand all their forces. There the woman is playing in the sand, lost in thought, but then she suddenly rouses from her daydream and calls out the name of her husband: She can't find her wedding ring, which she has removed accidentally, and now it seems to be lost in the sand. Everything is at stake, but tragedy can be averted for the man keeps his cool, rushes to the next house and comes back with a sieve. A little later he holds the recovered ring in his hands triumphantly.This event seems to have been meaningful for the further living together of the couple, only the late arrival of Death intervenes in this apparently undisturbed harmony. The feelings of the old man are now marked by sorrow and grief because of the loss, but not by bewilderment or anger. These are the laws of Nature, which he has to obey. In the last take he therefore just slips on that ring again, the ring that signifies one thing in particular to this man who is about to reach the end of his journey. It shows him the reality of his life, that short spell of time that has slipped away so incredibly fast but of which at least he has the comforting certainty of having used it well.