The Garden of the Finzi-Continis/Il Giardino dei Finzi-Contini (1970) - An exquisite, painful De Sica WWII love drama

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A graphically recreated close-up of a young woman's beautiful face, encircled in autumn-colored leaves, makes up this striking poster for Vittorio De Sica's The Garden of the Finzi-Continis

In late-1930s Italy, while the fascists' power and madness escalates, life continues in Ferrara in Emilia-Romagna, where Jewish Giorgio is in love with his childhood friend Micòl from the wealthy, Jewish Finzi-Contini family.

The Garden of the Finzi-Continis is written by Ugo Pirro (Ogro (1979)) and Vittorio Bonicelli (Arabella (1980, miniseries)), adapting the same-titled 1962 novel by Giorgio Bassani (The Gold-rimmed Spectacles/Gli Occhiali d'Oro (1958)), and directed by Italian master filmmaker Vittorio De Sica (Rose Scarlatte (1940)), whose 25th feature it was. De Sica, Franco Brusati (Violent Life/Una Vita Violenta (1962)), Alain Katz (La Cosa Buffa (1972, second assistant director)), Tullio Pinelli (Flipper (1983, TV movie)), Cesare Zavattini (Lipstick/Il Rossetto (1960)) and Valerio Zurlini (Violent Summer/Estate Violenta (1959)) contributed uncredited screenplay work.

De Sica animates the fine, heart-rendering story with a familial tenderness, and the beautiful photography (by Ennio Guarnieri (Le Giraffe (2000))) and delectable costumes add much to this war-time drama/romance, which shows us the tragedy of WWII from a new angle: SPOILER Namely from the inside of two splendid Jewish families that are destroyed.

In this exquisite production the stars sparkle: Lino Capolicchio (An Impossible Crime/Un Delitto Impossibile (2001)) and Dominique Sanda (The Journey/El Viaje (1992)), along with Helmut Berger (Die Jäger (1982)) as the closeted homosexual and ill Alberto and Romolo Valli (Boom! (1968)) as Giorgio's proudly Italian father, whose patriotism is in vain. SPOILER Only the ending, in which the victims play tennis in slow-motion, is misbegotten.

 

Related post:

 

Vittorio De Sica: A Farewell to Arms (1957) or, Love in Spite! (co-star)

Watch a 2-minute clip from the film here

 

Cost: Unknown

Box office: In excess of 596k $ (North America alone)

= Uncertain

[The Garden of the Finzi-Continis premiered 2 December (Jerusalem, Israel) and runs 94 minutes. Shooting took place in Ferrara, Emilia-Romagna, Italy. Bassani was upset with how the relationship between Malnate and Micòl was made explicit in the film and distanced himself from De Sica. The only gross number readily available online is the 596k $ North-American gross. The film was nominated for 2 Oscars: It won for Best Foreign Film and lost Adapted Screenplay to Ernest Tidyman for The French Connection. It also won 1/2 BAFTA nominations, the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival, 1/2 David di Donatello nominations, was nominated for a Grammy, and won a National Board of Review award, among other honors. Roger Ebert gave the film a 4/4 star review, translating to a notch over this one. De Sica returned with an anthology segment, a TV-series episode and a TV documentary prior to his theatrical return with Lo Chiameremo Andrea (1972). Capolicchio returned in Le Tue Mani Sul Mio Corpo (1970); Sanda in Sans Mobile Apparent (1971); and Berger in Love Me Strangely/Un Beau Monstre (1971)). The Garden of the Finzi-Continis is fresh at 100 % with an 8.10/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of The Garden of the Finzi-Continis?

Everything Is Illuminated (2005) - Schreiber's inauspicious debut falls flat

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+ 2nd Worst Movie of the Year

+ Most Overrated Movie of the Year

Elijah Wood looks serene encapsulated in sunflowers on this poster for Liev Schreiber's Everything Is Illuminated

Everything Is Illuminated is an adaptation of Jonathan Safran Foer's (Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2005)) same-titled autobiographical 2002 novel, written and directed by actor-turned-filmmaker Liev Schreiber (Ray Donovan (2014-16)).

American Jew Jonathan Safran Foer travels to Ukraine in search of illumination as to his roots and family history.

SPOILER What he finds, which is revealed after about 1½ hour, is wholly predictably a mass grave and reconciliation with the peculiar Ukrainians he meets. - They create the film's only bright moments.
It is an otherwise extremely dull time, filled with insufferably long music sequences - with lousy music - and led by Elijah Wood (Set Fire to the Stars (2014)) as the bespectacled, unendurably alienated Foer. If the film had only had a fifth of the self-complacent, pretentious air it flies contently on, it would have been plenty. 
Everything Is Illuminated seems to attempt to be a dramedy, but taken as a drama it is bad, and taken as a comedy it is even worse.

Related reviews:

Liev Schreiber: Pawn Sacrifice (2014) - Zwick, Knight and Maguire's mediocre chess genius movie (actor) 
Fading Gigolo (2013) - Turturro's pleasant turn as a high-end NY prostitute  (actor)

2005 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I] 

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: 7 mil. $
Box office: 3.6 mil. $
= Huge flop
[Everything Is Illuminated premiered September 3 (Telluride Film Festival) and runs 104 minutes. Filming took place in Ukraine and the Czech Republic, including in Prague, from June - August 2004. The film opened #45 in 6 theaters to 66k $ in North America, where it peaked at #29 in 110 theaters and grossed 1.7 mil. $ (47.2 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Italy with 1 mil. $ (27.8 %) and Germany with 205k $ (5.7 %). The film won two awards at Venice Film Festival as well as 'special recognition for excellence in filmmaking' from the National Board of Review. Roger Ebert have awarded it 3/4 stars. Schreiber has only directed two episodes of Ray Donovan since the film, and continues to be acting. Everything Is Illuminated is fresh at 66 % with a 6.5 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Everything Is Illuminated?

The Possession (2012) - Bornedal's possession horror struggles with the demon of mediocrity

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A swarm of moths seems to come out of a girl's mouth on this gnarly poster for Ole Bornedal's The Possession

A recently divorce-stricken family contract a grave problem, when a box bought at a yard sale turns out to be a Jewish dybbuk box harboring an evil spirit.

People see movies like The Possession for a variety of reasons. When it ran in theaters, some people told me they had laughed their way through it. Despite it being disrespectful to the fellow audience members and the people that made the movie, - but what is most critical for the filmmakers, I reckon, is that they still went and saw it, - in substantial numbers, actually, - and so their derisive, impolite laughter may not count for much in the end.
The trailer for The Possession is great, which you can see below, and that might have contributed immensely to its success, because it has some central drawbacks:
1. Possession has no real stars: Jeffrey Dean Morgan (They Came Together (2014)) and Kyra Sedgwick (Behind the Red Door (2003)) might be familiar enough faces, but they don't count as actual stars in my book. Furthermore, they both play their parts woodenly at times. 
2. The plot of the film is not terribly original to say the least. The backside to the trailer is that it pretty much tells the entire narrative of the movie, which therefore gets to feel like a drawn out trailer, - which no film aims to do.
Writing team Juliet Snowden and Stiles White (Oujia (2014), both), who based their script on an article by Leslie Gornstein, don't succeed in adding to the possession horror subgenre that they have explained that they endeavored into as fans of William Friedkin's classic horror masterpiece The Exorcist (1973). The provocations and sophistication of that movie don't linger in The Possession, where certain scenes are almost laughable in the way they seem to talk down to their audience, SPOILER as when the distressed father seeks out a room full of wise, bearded Jews to explain the evil box, and they all walk in different directions in instant fright, when he mentions it. Or when the girl stabs her father in the hand with a fork without there being any consequences, reproach or nothing.
The grip on horror here could also be tighter, SPOILER as when the savior-Jew screams continuously at the demon, (which isn't scary), or a teacher is thrown out a window, (which in the genre's context is simply an inadequate death.) William Peter Blatty's (Gunn (1967)) script for The Exorcist was something else, and that is just one of the reasons why that is a great movie, and The Possession is a mediocre one.
The ideas in The Possession which do seem fresh is its focus on a divorce dilemma, wherein everything gets blamed on the dad, and the women with their veganism and other modern ideas such as 'seeing someone' (that is, psychiatrists) continually prove to be very wrong and idiotic. It is all in vein of the fundamentally - mostly - conservative genre of horror. - Nothing modern is of any use against ancient demons, as the genre diehard will know without fail. (Nor should it be.)
The opening announcement of the film, - that the following events took place in 29 days, - have no real meaning or import, besides being a reference to the menstrual cycle, and thus the burgeoning teen-possession also has that rather backwards leg to walk on. (Menstruation equaling freak-out demonism.) Take that as you want.
The extremely simple score by Anton Sanko (Rabbit Hole (2010)) with one recurring note returning again and again works, and the movie, besides its faults, certainly still managed to scare the audience that I saw it with.
The Possession is directed by great Danish filmmaker Ole Bornedal (The Substitute/Vikaren (2007)), who references his own great horror Nattevagten/Nightwatch (1994) in it and has declared that he was drawn to it as an allegory for divorce more than as a horror. And it does seem very intent on its regret/shame/neglect/'the-modern-world-is-crap' focus. Raging out after a personal divorce with a horror movie doesn't result in greatness in this case.(David Cronenberg (Scanners (1981)) did just about the same with his The Brood (1979), which is also more strange and off-putting than really scary in my opinion.)

Director Bornedal and producer Sam Raimi (Spider-Man (2002)) talk about the film at its premiere here

Cost: 14 mil. $
Box office: 85.4 mil. $
= Huge hit (returned 6.1 times its cost]
[The Possession was released 30 August and runs 92 minutes. It is very loosely based on a real story of an allegedly haunted dybbuk box. Shooting took place in 'early 2011' in British Columbia, Canada. Bornedal and Morgan have both related strange occurrences of lights exploding and the props burning five days after shooting in a storage fire. The film opened #1 to a 17.7 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it stayed #1 for another week, then dropped to #3 and then left the top 5, grossing 49.1 mil. $ (57.5 % of the total gross). The film's 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were the UK with 5.3 mil. $ (6.2 %) and Mexico with 3.8 mil. $ (4.4 %). Roger Ebert gave the film a 3.5/4 star review, translating to two notches higher than this one. Bornedal has kept his career in his native Denmark since the film; he returned with 1864 (2014, miniseries) and theatrically with Small Town Killers/Dræberne fra Nibe (2017). Morgan returned in Red Dawn (2012), Sedgwick in Kill Your Darlings (2013). The Possession is rotten at 40 % with a 5.11/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of The Possession?
Any personal experiences with a possession or haunting?