Diagonaldi Very well executed

Solemplex To me, this movie is perfection.

Nessieldwi Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

Quiet Muffin This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Dennis Littrell (Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon.)Not to be flippant, but the Christian Democrats outshine the Red Brigade by quite a bit in this political dramatization of the kidnapping and murder of Italy's former prime minister in 1978. Highlight of the movie is the performance by Maya Sansa as Chiara, one of the kidnappers. She is a red because of what happened to her father at the hands of the government. Consequently Chiara is an emotional communist, not an ideological one; and so the up close and personal kidnapping, "trial," and eventual murder of the gentle and truly Christian Aldo Moro (played with strength and grace by Roberto Herlitzka) began to wear on her spirit, making her question what she is a part of--not, however, enough for her to do anything about it except in her dreams.The reason the Christians outshine the communists here (and elsewhere by the way) is that the communist ideology requires murders in the name of ideology whereas Christianity does not condone murder for any reason, although some Christians seem unaware of that. The movie includes the communist rationale for the murder, which Chiara, with tears in her eyes, cannot accept even though she hates the bourgeois who have run Italy since World War II. Incidentally the mini speech that one of the kidnappers gives to Chiara to justify the murder sounded a bit like something one might hear from Al Qaeda.Maya Sansa is brilliant and her countenance captured my eyes, but I question whether she was the right person to play this role. Although strong and charismatic, she seems anything but the rabid revolutionary.Director Marco Bellocchio's use of fantasy scenes was effective in that it highlighted the torn and nearly (nearly!) impossible desire of Chiara to free Moro. However the unlikely device of a co-worker at the library writing a screenplay called "Good Morning, Night" which depicts the events of the movie and the fictionalized kidnapping seemed a bit much. That he could divine these events just by knowing Chiara, as though channeling her, seemed almost mawkish in the face of the historical reality. But Bellocchio and Anna Laura Braghetti, who wrote the novel from which the movie was adapted, were perhaps inspired by an actual seance attended by some government officials who used a psychic medium in an effort to locate the kidnapper's hideout.Clearly a plus was to see Christian values triumph over communist ones, and to see in retrospect a triumph for the good over the not so good. Moro died, but he died a hero and a respected man. His killers were disgraced and given (by American standards anyway) relatively lenient sentences, perhaps because they were so young. This is in keeping with the forgiveness that is at the heart of Christianity, allowing the Italian people to maintain the moral high road over what was then called the Red Menace.But I have to be honest. I would have found this movie almost boring were it not for the presence of Maya Sansa. Bellocchio wisely focused the camera on her as often as possible. Her emotional experience, as revealed by her features and her voice, went a long way toward carrying the movie.

Roland E. Zwick On March 16, 1978, Aldo Moro, the Prime Minister of Italy, was kidnapped by a group of Communist revolutionaries known as the Red Brigade and held in captivity for 55 days. Through letters and photos sent by the kidnappers, the authorities learned that Moro had been given a "trial" by the Red Brigade and sentenced to death for his crimes against the proletariat of Italy - and, indeed, on May 9th of that year, his body was found, riddled with ten rounds of bullets, in the trunk of an abandoned car.In "Good Morning, Night," writer/director Marco Bellochio takes the events and drains them of much of their sociopolitical significance, choosing instead to focus on the human drama at the story's core. Bellochio looks at the ambivalent feelings and conflicted motives underlying the kidnappers' actions, particularly in the case of an attractive young woman named Chiara (confidently played by Maya Sansa), who comes to question her commitment to "the cause" as the reality of what they are planning to do begins to sink in. It is largely through her eyes that we come to view the events and to see Moro less as an impersonal force to be manipulated for political purposes and more as a simple human being with all the fears, insecurities and desperate desire for life common to us all. Indeed, the political aspects stay largely in the background, relegated mainly to clips of stock footage showing us the principal players of the time dealing with the crisis.With its dreamy visions, fantasy sequences, and tendency towards wild speculation, the film may frustrate those who would have preferred a more historically accurate, documentary approach to the topic. But Bellochio, as an artist, is less concerned with the "facts" of the case than with exploring the dilemma of the revolutionary's mindset. And to that end, he has done an exemplary job in "Good Morning, Night."

davidgautier Based on a novel, the film describes the situation of Aldo Moro during his captivity. There is more than a meticulous realistic point of view given in this film : it tries to figure thoughts and attitudes of the kidnappers, members of brigate rosse. It explores the contradictions of hidden activists who are desperately trying to justify violent actions by the salvation of proletariat and rise of a social justice. They are seen in their loneliness, especially on the affective, emotional side. The psycho-rigidity of their mind is patent, not only in the sententious talks to their prisoner, in a certain desperate naivety to seek echos of their action in public opinion throughout medias, but also in the way they rule relationships. It's not politically that Moro's character strongly opposes to his kidnappers' characters, but rather in the way he's emotionnaly tied to his family (although being a prisonner, he can write letters), while the others seem alienated facing their own families (Mariano pretends to have cut any link to his son, Chiara tries to avoid familial phone calls and meetings, another member is mad about being away of his girl and suffers to be away from her mind and point of view when he sees her). Together, those members don't look like a family of a new kind. Maybe is it the main limit of Bellochio's movie, not to explore the way such an internal and autistic logical builds inside radical groups. But the movie spots a clearly defined place and time, focusing exclusively on elements linked to Moro's detention in a casual apartment (the gunfight of the kidnapping and then the death of the prisonner are seen indirectly throughout television). The strength of the movie is to develop a symbolic aspect with the character of Chiara's colleague (of her cover work) who defends imagination against the brutality of autocratic arbitrary. Almost fantastically, this character seems to guess Chiara's situation, writing a fiction about the events (like the movie we're effectively seeing as spectators) and modifying her feelings : when she realizes how any execution is horrible and unfair (reminding executions of italian partisani of WWII), it's too late and there is no other escape than in her own imagination (dream-like scene that the film also shows us). I believe it's a good and clever way to introduce us into such a historical event (maybe still wounding italian society), imagination. I also like the aspects and details of the movie that describe the importance of christianity in the conscience of the italians (even marxists ones, subconsciously) and critizises the sacrificial consensus into a falsely ineluctable execution but real murder.

jaapparqui The Italian national trauma of the kidnapping of Aldo Moro is a very interesting subject. A deed like that raises many questions. Why is anybody so obsessed by his ideals to kidnap the Italian president and subsequently murder him? How mentally ill is such a person? What emotions do you have when you are locked up for months in a row knowing that you'll probably gonna die? Hardly any of these questions is answered in the film. All you see is two hours of people walking through the appartment. The political discussions with Moro could give some insight in the motivations of the kidnappers but are superficial. It is as if only the uninteresting aspects of this kidnapping where filmed. There are also moving moments though: the letters of Moro to his family are heartbreaking.