Reviews

A great movie about discipline, responsibility and the importance of performing at your best whatever task you have to carry out. An important message in times of complain, protest and nihilism. The director powerfully uses images more and better than the dialogue. In this respect, he stands aside the great masters of the past (one name: Alfred Hitchcock, quite explicitly quoted in the movie) and won't fail to please all the true movie lovers. All actors are great, but it is the compassionate eye of the director that wins the scene. The soundtrack is also adding to the atmosphere and does its job remarkably well. Should I add that I truly enjoyed this little masterpiece?

Giuseppe Tornatore's Baaria is many movies in one. An accumulation of themes, scenes, styles and characters, not always fully integrated in one main storyline.

All together they form the memories of the city of Bagheria in Sicily, as well as of Giuseppe Tornatore himself. He recognizes the influence that the past – either directly experienced or handed down by his father - had in shaping his destiny. Like Sergio Leone's "Once Upon a Time in America", Baaria displays the circularity of time, overlapping different layers of past to represent the "texture" of the present.

The lack of linearity in the progression of the story and in the development of characters, gives - at times - a sense of unevenness and incompleteness, that risks to limit its impact on audiences.