Actuakers One of my all time favorites.

Steineded How sad is this?

SpunkySelfTwitter It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

Rosie Searle It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

sandeepmk1 A friend of mine, who also is avid movie fan, recommended me this movie. I was initially apprehensive looking at the length of the movie, but then decided to give it go. I did not want to the movie to end, it is the most poetic and graceful movie i have seen in sometime now. Matteo and Nicola, both played to perfection by the actors...the anger felt by Matteo, the loneliness was essayed flawlessly by Alessio....i could see glimpses of 'Che' in him, so did i see it in Nicola as well. There are no cinematic liberties taken in the movie...the twist and turn as beautiful as the women in the movie. I watched this movie spread over 3 days and those 3 days i lived the lives of Matteo, Nicola, Giorgia and Giulia. I highly recommend this movie for people who appreciate cinema.

satanetto As an Italian who goes abroad sometimes, I was often confronted with people asking me how come I had not seen this movie. And I had pretty much liked "I Cento Passi" and "Pasolini un delitto italiano", and loved "Maledetti vi amero'", from the same director. Still, there was something in the way people spoke about this movie that made me doubt. Or maybe it was something about the kind of people who liked it. While watching this movie you realize that there are three families that are involved in pretty much every important event in contemporary Italian history. One is more a collection of families, called Cosa Nostra. The other one is a peculiar kind of family: a fraternity called P2, which is ruling the country by now. The third one? It's the Carati family, of course! From the red terrorism of late 70's to the bombs of early 90's, there seem to be no major event where they are not directly involved. Does it seem an unlikely kind of plot? Well, if you package it as a neat and cheesy TV product it seems to work pretty well, given the amount of enthusiastic reviews and high rates it received here. Plus, it's 6 hrs long, so it must be good cinema, right? I must admit I was initially captured by the '68 scenes. It must have been the music. As the reel went on I quickly realized that the young rebels being portrayed were of those kind that made Pasolini stand for the police: well grown and well fed sons-of-someone bourgeois. But look, they're so open and tolerant with the lower class, they even have a friend who's not studying (Vitale). The more it went on, the more I was appalled by the TV-ish acting (all except maybe Lo Cascio). Wanna look angry? Curl your eyebrows and talk louder, it will work. (SPOILER) I was soon emotionally detached from the whole thing to the point that I cheered when the cop jumped out of the window. And when the aging bourgeois Nicola calls the now successful builder Vitale to restructure the "casale" he bought on the Tuscany hills.. oh, my heart was filled sheer proletarian rage.

bandw I liked this so well that my first reaction after having watched it was to go back and watch it again. And that is what I did. As with most any good movie, a second viewing is more rewarding than the first, particularly if reading subtitles has been required.It has been a long time since the heydays of Fellini, Bertolucci, or Antonioni, so it's good to see a quality Italian film come out that has international appeal. The ambitious scope of this film, covering the lives of a family from 1966 to 2003, well justifies its six hour length. The story concentrates on two brothers, Nicola and Matteo, who take quite different paths, with Nicola becoming a psychiatrist and Matteo a cop. In addition to the brothers we get to know their parents, siblings (two female), lovers, friends, and children. The number of characters is balanced, not too many to be confusing but enough to make things interesting.Director Giordana definitely has the eye of an artist. The movie is masterfully filmed throughout, and some scenes are so beautifully shot that you can only respond with a sense of awe. Consider the scenes that have Nicola wandering through a natural history museum with his daughter. The editing is flawless and the tracking shot from a distance that interposes various animals as the two walk along is brilliant. Or take the scene where Nicola is at the photography exhibit with large photos mounted on stands throughout the hall. This is where having the luxury of a relaxed time constraint pays off. Nicola wanders among the photos for some time before finding the one he is looking for. The mood of that scene makes us as anxious to find the sought after photo as Nicola is.I thought all the actors were effective and was particularly impressed with Sonia Bergamasco who plays Nicola's significant other Giulia. Camilla Filippi, who plays Nicola's daughter Sara as an adult, is most appealing. And it doesn't hurt that all of the young actors are physically attractive.The story is told in a linear fashion and it moves along seamlessly, which is a testament to the editing. I am sure that inter-cutting the lives of the various characters while supplying a backdrop of historical events was not easy. I particularly appreciated this as a counterpoint to the disjointed time sequencing and jump cuts adopted by so many current movies. I learned a good deal of recent Italian history from this movie, but the emphasis was always on the characters. The point is well made as to how much our lives are shaped by the larger social events of the time. I never understood before how turbulent things were in Italy during the time frame of this movie.I liked how many of the characters remained enigmatic. What prompted Giulia to become a member of the revolutionary Red Brigades, at the sacrifice of her family? Matteo is so complex and conflicted that I never figured him out. He could be sensitive but also subject to fits of anger. The only consistency in Matteo was his love for his brother, even though they were sometimes at odds. Matteo was prone to self-inflicted wounds--on a visit to Rome he sees his parents as he drives by them, but he does not stop; he makes a date with a girl but shows up only to follow her secretly in his car as she finally walks away. For all of Nicola's skills as a psychiatrist, in the end it is seen that he did not quite understand his brother either. This movie does not dazzle you with technique but rather seduces you into becoming involved with its story and its characters. Who can argue with a technique that accomplishes that?

Thagusta I've had the biggest trouble rating this movie, First of all the characters depicted in this movie are superb, complex, deep, sad, brilliantly acted, etc. I've never seen a movie that has so many complex characters. Lots of praise.Second, the pictures are most of the time very, very beautiful, everything has been thought of, in the smallest detail. Lots of praise for this as well.You'd say, why don't you give this movie 10 out of 10 then? because of the plot. The plot is good, though, I believe they could've done a better job, some plot points aren't as good as they could be, and some parts of the plot have been overreacted, especially the sad parts, some other (better parts) of the plot flash by, which is a pity.This is the reason I had such a hard time voting, plot is way worse than the acting, the characters, the pictures, the soundtrack, etc. characters: 10/10 acting: 10/10 plot: 7/10 result: 8/10I would recommend this movie to anyone, and in particular people who love drama, just a story of a person. Or to people that like great soundtracks, or to people that like beautiful pictures in movies, etc. etc.Funny part: At the end of the movie, the mother (Giuglia) looks younger than the daughter, well, she has got gray hair, but that's about it, no wrinkles, nothing. It's hard to make people age 40 years in one movie, I know, so, director, you have my respect for Adriana, because she really ages perfectly, although when you look carefully, you do see she's only in her 30s instead of her 70s... :)