Tre Fratelli, 1981
[Three Brothers]
Three
Brothers opens to an oddly sterile medium shot of a building wall (made
even colder and more impersonal by the black and white photography) as the
amplified sound of a heartbeat discordantly accompanies an elegiac melody,
before a jarring chromatic shift focuses the camera in extreme close-up
at the center of a littered, derelict vacant lot amid a pack of rats scavenging
for food. The strangely primal image serves to wake the pensive and introverted
Rocco (Vittorio Mezzogiorno) from his discomforting sleep, who then subsequently
opens his door to reveal the bustling sight of rambunctious, troubled adolescents
in their sleeping quarters at a juvenile reformatory facility in Naples.
An early morning visit from the local police seemingly reinforces his own
sense of crisis over the efficacy of his selfless efforts to rescue the
children entrusted to his care as their investigation into a series of petty
thefts has been traced back to several unidentified young delinquents who
have devised a means to scale the walls of the institute at night to sneak
into town, then return to the facility unobserved by morning, and have asked
Rocco for his assistance in identifying the perpetrators. The theme of protective
and isolating walls carries through to the image of Rocco's elderly father
Donato (Charles Vanel) as he leaves the gates of his remote mountainside
villa in southern Italy and, while walking through an open field, has a
surreal encounter with his wife Catalina as she attempts to recapture an
errant rabbit that had escaped from the kitchen. Donato's subsequent arrival
at a telegram office in town reveals the source of the old man's melancholic
bewilderment over the unexpected rendezvous as he initiates a series of
telegrams to his grown children informing them of their mother's death. The
eldest son Raffaelle (Philippe Noiret), a successful, often publicized judge
in Rome who has presided over a series of high profile cases involving organized
crime and domestic terrorism, has been asked to assume yet another volatile (and
consequently, potentially dangerous) case from a retiring, disillusioned
judge. Weighing the entreaties of his apprehensive wife (Andréa Ferréol)
to reject the proposed judicial appointment out of safety concerns with
his own moral imperative to dispense law fairly in the belief that the simple
(but often courageous) act of upholding justice reinforces the nation's
underlying fabric of democracy, Rafaelle seizes his unexpected trip to his
ancestral home away from the familial pressures of his own wife and son
as an opportunity to reflect on what could become a fatal decision. In contrast
to the well-established Rafaelle, the youngest son Nicola (Michele Placido),
estranged from his northern-born wife, leads a near transient life as a
factory worker in Turin, constantly championing the cause of the working
class by participating in worker strikes and management intimidation. Bringing
along his warm and affectionate young daughter Marta (Marta Zoffoli) home
for the funeral, his life has been defined by the instability of his personal
and professional relationships. Brought together by tragedy, the three ideologically
dissimilar brothers are compelled to reflect on their own personal direction
in the gravity of their profound, shared grief.
Loosely adapted from Andrei Platonov's novel The Third
Son by Francesco Rosi and renowned screenwriter Tonino Guerra, Three Brothers
is an elegantly muted, thoughtful, and provocative observation of the sociopolitical
climate of 1970s Italy, as the national struggle with widespread corruption,
economic disparity, organized crime, delinquency, and domestic terrorism
(by the young radicals of the Red Brigade) seemed escalating and interminable.
By integrating extended dream sequences into a naturalistic, social realist
framework, Rosi illustrates the underlying idealism and sense of human decency
that pervade the seemingly conflicting actions and divergent life calling
of the three brothers as each strives to improve social conditions through
dedicated service. Rosi further incorporates recurring imagery of life in
the bucolic southern village through dreams and flashbacks in order to reflect
a timelessness and perpetuity of Donato and Catalina's simple, unhurried
life in the country: Donato's dissemination of the tragic news through outmoded
telegrams (in the absence of a telephone in the house) that is inferred in
Rocco's memory of the delayed arrival of Allied soldiers on a lone tank into
town (and into the sight of an puzzled, surrendering village) to announce
the end of war; Marta's oblivious playing at a grain storage barn that mirrors
a flashback of a newly married Catalina (Simonetta Stefanelli) burying her
feet in the sand on a beach and subsequently losing her wedding ring; the
couple's joyful outdoor wedding celebration despite the interruption of rain
that is contrasted against constant reminders of their sons' fractured (Nicola),
voluntarily separated (Raffaelle), and nonexistent (Rocco) families. It is
this sentimental incongruence that inevitably defines the seeming cultural
irreconcilability between the rooted Donato and his emigrated children -
an understanding of one's humble sense of purpose within the unpredictable
and disillusioning chaos of his environment - the patience to carry out
the minutiae of life's forbidding, existential task, diligently sifting
through the metaphoric sands of time, to recover an irreplaceable piece
of one's soul.
© Acquarello 2004. All rights reserved.
In
1935, a distinguished artist and intellectual turned escorted political
prisoner from Turin named Carlo Levi (Gian Maria Volonté)
arrives at the railroad terminal station at Eboli for further transportation
- first by a series of public buses, then by a waiting automobile
dispatched by the regional mayor Don Luigi (Paolo Bonacelli) - into
the remote district of Lucania (now Basilicata) in southern Italy
where he is turned over to local officials to serve out his sentence
of monitored confinement in the desolate town. After receiving a
brief and informal (and highly irregular) orientation on the local
customs and expected behavior - along with a healthy dose of village
gossip - from Don Luigi (who seems more eager to make a good
impression on the prominent detained "guest" than to enforce state
regulation), Don Carlo is released into the population where his
privileged life, medical degree, and progressive thinking seem at
odds with the townspeople's stubborn observation of ancient superstitions
and outmoded, feudal customs. Resigned to an uneventful and leisurely
existence, Don Carlo spends his empty days wandering aimlessly through
the provincial town and spending quiet evenings at the boarding house.
However, the seemingly predictable rhythm of his idyllic (if not
idle) routine inevitably begins to be disrupted when a group of desperate
mothers visit him one evening to seek out medical assistance for
their ailing children, and soon, word of the non-practicing physician's
competency (and above all, willingness to help the destitute villagers)
spreads through the insular village. Further motivated out of his
inertia by his devoted sister Luisa (Lea Massari), a conscientious
physician who witnesses first-hand the inadequacy of health care
in the region, Don Carlo moves into his own home, and with the help
of his diligent housekeeper Giulia (Irene Papas), begins to occupy
his time in his studio and makeshift infirmary, in the process,
finds renewed purpose in his state-imposed isolation.