Apparently it was a very limited release then.   Too bad it was only showing at one theater in downtown Chicago here.  I would have loved to have seen it on the big screen but I am not one to drag my hinie all the way downtown just to see a movie.   Now.....dinner, a movie and an overnighter with a handsome hunk?   Sure thing!

Yo NICKIE?   You coming to Chi-town anytime soon?

ROTFLMWAO..............at the thought of it!

Thanks Bon, you´re sweet. Can´t wait to hear your opinion when you see the movie.

Each family is its own planet...isn´t it?

I forgot to add this tidbit: at the very beginning, when Bennie arrives to La Boca to visit Tetro, he passes by a wall with a graffitti. It reads: "No sueltes la soga que me ata a tu alma". Translation: "Don´t let go of the rope that is tying me down to your soul". Such a beautiful message.

FYI, this movie is bilingual, they swap from English to Spanish all the time, so you´ll see it partly subtitled in the U.S.



-- Edited by mara on Sunday 28th of June 2009 02:21:40 PM

Ok, here you go:

Yesterday I went and saw this highly anticipated movie. What can I say, it was a puzzling experience. I think Coppola has written a regretful love letter to his family, and even though we´re allowed to read the letter, we cannot make full sense of it. I guess only his family members can put the pieces of this torn paper together. (I won´t spoil the final twist to you here either)

The theater was packed for an early show, and people were silent, like they were at a religious service. Coppola is loved in my country. There was a lot of respect in that room. However, I overheard mostly disappointed comments at the exit. The main Spanish critics hate the movie too. They think TETRO doesn´t live up to its promise and Coppola doesn´t live up to his own legend. Most accuse him of pedantry. I wouldn´t say that, the movie for me was totally intriguing, entertaining and it had that streak of unreal magical realism that is so dear to stories set in Southamerican soil. It´s a movie about accursed artists, how can you possibly not have some meditations about the nature of art, some over the top scenes, some tortured souls going through a lot of pointless suffering? It comes with the territoy.

My take on TETRO is, I liked 90% of it. The character of the Big One was a bit fake for my taste: The figure of this cruel monster of a father, the universally acclaimed musical genius for whom his artistic success is a relentless excuse to destroy any family members who could get on his way to eternal fame. I wasn´t crazy about the Argentinian characters either, they felt pointless to me (wonderful actors BTW, it´s not easy to act over the top all the time). And Buenos Aires is such a magnificient city that I was left starving for more of it. The whole journey to Patagonia felt a bit hollow too, even though the breathtaking scenery was beautifully photograped. BUT, I guess Coppola wanted to make the setting as unrealistic as possible to prevent us from relating to the characters and being too absorbed by the plot, and make us concentrate instead on the symbolic significance of the events at hand.

IMO, the tone is exaggerated on purpose. It goes from a fibber realism to a more truthful expressionist symbolism as the film progresses. But it also becomes more and more abstract and you feel more and more clueless as the plot arrives to a conclusion that makes sense again only in the very final scenes. Thats why I believe some missing pieces of the jigsaw puzzle only the Coppolas can insert in the big picture. But the message is duly delivered nevertheless, loud and clear: there´s a lot of love in a love/hate relationship, and that alone makes it worth the strain.

The rest of stuff, I absolutely loved. The three main actors are extraordinary. I was very surprised by the Spanish Maribel Verdú, she´s so warm and endearing as the shrink deeply in love with her patient Tetro. Her endurance of his swinging moods and his self-destructive ways is short of heroic, but it never feels schmaltzy. Vincent Gallo plays a tortured soul to perfection, true to his art to the last possible conclusion, the guardian of a terrible secret whose disappointment in his beloved and admired father is killing him. And the same goes for the young actor playing Bennie, Alden E. (surname too complicated for me). He´s genial first and bitter afterwards as the younger one who, on his turn, feels abandoned at an early age by his idolized big brother and is increasingly disappointed in Tetro´s convoluted brand of relationships, until he learns the reasons behind it all.

The photograpy in black & white is gorgeus. And the ballet scenes in color are wonderfully operatic, there´s one in particular that caught everybody´s fancy, there´s a digital composition in which the dancers are placed on a parquet flooring but there are sea waves around them. The original soundtrack is simply beautiful, I´ll look for it. There´s a song by the real Carmine Coppola featured, which has a significance to the plot, called Naomi, it´s a great song.

Coppola said in many interviews that he made up the events on the movie but that it all had really happened. I think the predicament he depicts, this rivalry that is like a biblical plague for all involved, could be traced down in his own family tree: this movie then would be about Anton and Carmine, about August and Francis... and about Christopher and Nicolas. That I know of. The Coppolas are a prolific family and there could be more instances of grudges between brothers we haven´t heard about.

Coppola also said that when someone from your inmediate family says he doesn´t want to hear about any of his relatives ever again all you can do about it is, simply have patience. Hope patience pays in his case, the maestro deserves it.

-- Edited by mara on Sunday 28th of June 2009 07:52:39 AM

Well Maribel has more or less my age and she´s been on movies since she was 15, so I do know her, LOL! She began doing comedies, but now she´s become a good dramatic actress over the years. I guess her performance in Tetro will suffer from her lackluster English accent. She´s far better than Penelope though. In fact, Penelope is rather mediocre compared to other Spanish actresses of her generation, and not nearly as beautiful as some of them.... she got luckier, that´s all. Was in the right place at the right moment. But she´s not the best we´ve got. We can do much better, LOL!

-- Edited by mara on Tuesday 23rd of June 2009 06:38:19 PM

Ok, check this out: TETRO opens next Friday in Madrid, and the actress playing Tetro´s gilfriend (and shrink, if I recall correctly) is Spanish. Her name is Maribel Verdú, she started as a bimbo teen but has developed her own ripe dramatic persona onscreen.

Sooo, she´ll be online tomorrow for the readers of one of Spain´s most read newspapers. And, as a sneak peek of sorts, the paper has uploaded an exclusive clip of the movie. Here we go:

http://www.elmundo.es/especiales/2009/06/cultura/maribel_verdu/tetro_adelanto.html

In the text to the left, Coppola´s words are translated into Spanish. He says something along the lines of: Even though you can look at my own family to shed some light on the subject-matter of the film, the story most probably could be of interest to any family, because this kind of rivalry goes on in every household.

After seeing this, I´m itching to see the whole thing. Francis Coppola has some good taste: Buenos Aires is a very literary city and at the same time it´s packed with psychoanalysts. The perfect setting for a failed writer´s story.


-- Edited by mara on Monday 22nd of June 2009 01:42:11 PM

You´re too sweet. Will do.

Ooops, I didn´t notice you had already posted it!

Sounds promising huh? Can´t wait to see the movie.

Well you can hear Ebert´s take on it (not te reference to Nic). Sounds good...  the Argentinian press seems to like it too...

Movies<p/> Review

A son takes sides against the family; In Coppola's autobiographical 'Tetro,' it's made up but all true

Roger Ebert; The Chicago Sun-Times

838 palabras

19 de junio de 2009

Chicago Sun-Times

Final

B4

inglés

© Copyright 2009, NewsBank. All Rights Reserved

'Tetro' Rating 3 out of 4

Tetro Vincent Gallo

Bennie Alden Ehrenreich

Miranda Maribel Verdu

Carlo/Alfie Klaus Maria Brandauer

Alone Carmen Maura

Jose Rodrigo de la Serna

American Zoetrope presents a film written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola. In English and Spanish with English subtitles. Running time: 127 minutes. No MPAA rating. Opening today at Landmark Century.

'Tetro" may be the most autobiographical film Francis Ford Coppola has made. He said at Cannes "nothing in it happened, but it's all true." I guess I know what that means. He could be describing any "autobiographical" film or novel. The pitfall is in trying to find parallels: Coppola had a father who was a famous conductor, he has a brother he has sometimes argued with, his sister Talia Shire somewhat resembles the heroine of this film, his nephew Nicolas Cage somewhat resembles the character Tetro, and on and on. All meaningless.

Better to begin with a more promising starting point: The film is boldly operatic, involving family drama, secrets, generations at war, melodrama, romance and violence. I'm only guessing, but Coppola, considering his father and his Italian-American heritage, may be as opera-besotted as any living American director, including Scorsese. His great epic "Apocalypse Now" is fundamentally, gloriously, operatic. The oedipal issues in the "Godfather" trilogy are echoed again in "Tetro." The emotions are theatrical, not realistic.

For that, he has the right actor, Vincent Gallo, who devotes himself to the title role with heedless abandon. There is nothing subtle about his performance, and nothing should be. He plays the son of a famous conductor, he lives in exile in Buenos Aries, he has a lover who loyally endures his impossibilities. There are events in his past that damaged him, and he is unhappy that his younger brother, Bennie (Alden Ehrenreich), knocks unexpectedly at the door. He never wanted to see him again.

Miranda (Maribel Verdu), Tetro's girlfriend, welcomes the young man, who works as a waiter on a cruise ship now in port for repairs. She wishes she knew more about Tetro's family and the reasons for his unhappiness. Tetro is uniformly hostile to almost everyone, except Miranda, perhaps because he needs at least one person to speak with. Bennie bunks down in their apartment, is kept an arm's length from Tetro, is left alone in the flat, finds an unfinished play by Tetro, finishes it and submits it to a festival run by the nation's most powerful critic, Alone (Carmen Maura). Argentina here is a nation that still has a powerful critic.

All hell breaks loose with Tetro, inspiring a series of flashbacks involving his father, Carlo (Klaus Maria Brandauer), a conductor who carries himself as a grand man. There are, of course, terrible secrets in the family past, known to Tetra but not to Bennie, and they are revealed in a final act worthy of Verdi.

Coppola and cinematographer Mihai Malaimare Jr. have photographed the central story in black and white, which made me hopelessly desire that more features could be made in this beautiful format. People who dislike b&w movies are, in their sad way, color-blind. The flashbacks are in color, presided over by Brandauer, as a sleek and contented reptile. In a way, this is what his amoral character in "Mephisto" could have turned out like. Without the strain of being given a lot of evil dialogue, he communicates egomania and selfishness.

Bennie has always idealized his older brother, picturing him as a brilliant writer in a far-away land, and is shaken to find the reality; Tetro's first entrance, on crutches, flailing at the furniture, is not promising. Gallo is not naturally given to playing ingratiating characters. He brings an uneasy edge to his work, and it's valuable here in evoking the deep wounds of his youth. In his first major role, Alden Ehrenreich, the newcomer playing Bennie, is confident and charismatic, and inspires such descriptions as "the new Leonardo DiCaprio," which reminds me of the old show-biz joke.

Perhaps it was because of the b&w photography, but while watching the film, I recalled for the first time in years Sidney Lumet's film of Arthur Miller's "A View from the Bridge" (1962), and Raf Vallone. "Tetro" has the same feel of too much emotion trapped in a room, and Gallo channels Vallone's savage drive. It was a good memory. Here is a film that, for all of its plot, depends on characters in service of their emotional turmoil. It feels good to see Coppola back in form.

Photo: A playwright (Vincent Gallo) is tormented by past events that left him an emotional cripple in Francis Ford Coppola's "Tetro." ; Photo: Bennie (Alden Ehrenreich, above) and Miranda (Maribel Verdu) try to break down Tetro's chilly reserve. ;

It opens on June 26 in Spain. I´ll try and catch it.