I'm a bit all over the place with respect to SICILIAN GHOST STORY. It's undeniably well-made and the cinematography is nothing less than gorgeous. Stylistically, it's difficult to find anything badly done in the entire picture.
So, being careful to completely step outside of myself and view the movie with the art-centric eyes of a movie critic, SICILIAN GHOST STORY is definitely an A+.
However, contemplating the movie as the human being that I am in my entirety, I find it thoroughly repugnant and the mentality of its creators in making it utterly incomprehensible. My reaction to the movie is so thoroughly negative I can't help but suspect there are cultural sensibilities at play in the hearts and minds of SICILIAN GHOST STORY's creators that place it outside of my ability to appreciate it.
SICILIAN GHOST STORY is an unexpected blend of a real-life Sicilian mob story of the most horrific kind uniquely mixed with significant fantasy elements possessed of ROMEO AND JULIET overtones.
The Sicilian mob elements, the foundational context in which the story takes place, are directly lifted from the real-life story of Giuseppe Di Matteo, the 11-year-old son of Santo Di Matteo, one of the assassins of Italian judge Giovanni Falcone who, when captured by the Italian police, began cooperating with the Italian government prosecutors. The Mafia kidnapped Giuseppe, held him captive, periodically tortured him over the course of more than 2 years, and then finally strangled him to death. They then dissolved his body in acid to deny the Di Matteo family the opportunity to give the boy a decent burial. Particularly tragic is that, as far as I can tell, even if the Mafia's attempts to force Santo Di Matteo to retract his statements had been successful, his deposition was already binding and he could not have effectively retracted them even had he wished to. In other words, Santo Di Matteo really didn't have any way of mollifying his son's kidnappers. All the torture and death of Giuseppe was for nothing in that it never could have been successful.
Whatever horrific image, scene or situation that you can imagine, I have probably seen it depicted in some movie or other over the course of my life. For the most part, most of what happens in most movies is make-believe. Generally speaking, taking exception with the thematic content or subject matter of a movie is out of bounds for the purposes of critique. If you don't like movies about "X", then don't watch movies about "X". Watching a movie about something you intrinsically don't like means you're watching a movie that can't please you no matter how hard it tries. Turning around and critiquing such a movie just wastes everybody's time.
I can swallow most movies that contain subject matter I find personally repugnant by the simple expedient of remembering that they are ONLY movies and are merely depictions of imaginary things that never really happened. Something repugnant but nonexistent may need to be consumed for the purposes of getting to the higher expression of art or meaning within the movie.
These truths notwithstanding, for the life of me, I cannot understand why anyone would want to make a movie such as SICILIAN GHOST STORY. Directors Fabio Grassadonnia and Antonio Piazza are unequivocally clear that the choices they made were deliberate, carefully selected and with apparently naught but good intentions. "It's a story of pure horror with no possible hope or redemption for anybody. But we made the film as an act of love for this stolen, forgotten child." Additionally, they were afraid "maybe the Italian audiences will think 'oh no, it's another Mafia story about a terrible event which happened in Sicily.' We don't want to watch it."
To make the Giuseppe Di Matteo tragedy more palatable, the directors blended in fantasy sequences where Giuseppe experiences romance and affection from a girl, Luna, with whom he had a budding romance at the time of his kidnapping. The bulk of the movie is, in fact, from the perspective of Luna and her fantasy sequences. Giuseppe himself is in fact a secondary character.
So what I get from this is they co-opted the horrific, short, staggeringly tortured life of a poor child, sugarcoated it with make-believe happiness and love-conquers-all BS in order to get people to watch their movie. They made a movie where, as you watch it, you KNOW that every heartbreaking, horrific thing you see REALLY DID happen to this poor kid and every GOOD thing, every imagined escape to love and hope, NEVER happened. Does somebody think that PRETENDING about mitigating circumstances in the face of real-life horror, against the actions of real-life monsters, accomplishes something worthwhile?
The only thing, the ONLY thing, that accomplishes ANYTHING even slightly worthwhile in the face of genuine monstrosity is punishing the guilty and disintegrating the constructs that made it possible which, in this case, would be the Sicilian mob.
"Uplifting" feelings derived from fantasizing happy endings in the face of REAL suffering is just self-delusion of an unforgivable kind. And it does REAL disservice to those who suffered. It serves to detract from their misery in the minds of the public.
A movie that depicted the harsh and un-glamorized reality of what actually happened to Giuseppe would be painful to watch but would at least have the redeemable virtue of crystallizing in the public's mind the actual dimensions of what this poor kid actually suffered. Sicilians are clearly still romantically intrigued by the Mafia monsters in their midst and need something harsh shoved down their throats to encourage them to join the human race. A revolting dose of un-alloyed reality might help them finally repudiate "our thing".
Clearly I don't get this movie at all and I REALLY don't get moviemakers who would deliberately choose to distort and pretty up the stunning tragedy of Giuseppe Di Matteo's short and tragic life to get people to watch their movie. That reviewers would actually APPLAUD this sort of thought process is a complete mystery to me.
So, being careful to completely step outside of myself and view the movie with the art-centric eyes of a movie critic, SICILIAN GHOST STORY is definitely an A+.
However, contemplating the movie as the human being that I am in my entirety, I find it thoroughly repugnant and the mentality of its creators in making it utterly incomprehensible. My reaction to the movie is so thoroughly negative I can't help but suspect there are cultural sensibilities at play in the hearts and minds of SICILIAN GHOST STORY's creators that place it outside of my ability to appreciate it.
SICILIAN GHOST STORY is an unexpected blend of a real-life Sicilian mob story of the most horrific kind uniquely mixed with significant fantasy elements possessed of ROMEO AND JULIET overtones.
The Sicilian mob elements, the foundational context in which the story takes place, are directly lifted from the real-life story of Giuseppe Di Matteo, the 11-year-old son of Santo Di Matteo, one of the assassins of Italian judge Giovanni Falcone who, when captured by the Italian police, began cooperating with the Italian government prosecutors. The Mafia kidnapped Giuseppe, held him captive, periodically tortured him over the course of more than 2 years, and then finally strangled him to death. They then dissolved his body in acid to deny the Di Matteo family the opportunity to give the boy a decent burial. Particularly tragic is that, as far as I can tell, even if the Mafia's attempts to force Santo Di Matteo to retract his statements had been successful, his deposition was already binding and he could not have effectively retracted them even had he wished to. In other words, Santo Di Matteo really didn't have any way of mollifying his son's kidnappers. All the torture and death of Giuseppe was for nothing in that it never could have been successful.
Whatever horrific image, scene or situation that you can imagine, I have probably seen it depicted in some movie or other over the course of my life. For the most part, most of what happens in most movies is make-believe. Generally speaking, taking exception with the thematic content or subject matter of a movie is out of bounds for the purposes of critique. If you don't like movies about "X", then don't watch movies about "X". Watching a movie about something you intrinsically don't like means you're watching a movie that can't please you no matter how hard it tries. Turning around and critiquing such a movie just wastes everybody's time.
I can swallow most movies that contain subject matter I find personally repugnant by the simple expedient of remembering that they are ONLY movies and are merely depictions of imaginary things that never really happened. Something repugnant but nonexistent may need to be consumed for the purposes of getting to the higher expression of art or meaning within the movie.
These truths notwithstanding, for the life of me, I cannot understand why anyone would want to make a movie such as SICILIAN GHOST STORY. Directors Fabio Grassadonnia and Antonio Piazza are unequivocally clear that the choices they made were deliberate, carefully selected and with apparently naught but good intentions. "It's a story of pure horror with no possible hope or redemption for anybody. But we made the film as an act of love for this stolen, forgotten child." Additionally, they were afraid "maybe the Italian audiences will think 'oh no, it's another Mafia story about a terrible event which happened in Sicily.' We don't want to watch it."
To make the Giuseppe Di Matteo tragedy more palatable, the directors blended in fantasy sequences where Giuseppe experiences romance and affection from a girl, Luna, with whom he had a budding romance at the time of his kidnapping. The bulk of the movie is, in fact, from the perspective of Luna and her fantasy sequences. Giuseppe himself is in fact a secondary character.
So what I get from this is they co-opted the horrific, short, staggeringly tortured life of a poor child, sugarcoated it with make-believe happiness and love-conquers-all BS in order to get people to watch their movie. They made a movie where, as you watch it, you KNOW that every heartbreaking, horrific thing you see REALLY DID happen to this poor kid and every GOOD thing, every imagined escape to love and hope, NEVER happened. Does somebody think that PRETENDING about mitigating circumstances in the face of real-life horror, against the actions of real-life monsters, accomplishes something worthwhile?
The only thing, the ONLY thing, that accomplishes ANYTHING even slightly worthwhile in the face of genuine monstrosity is punishing the guilty and disintegrating the constructs that made it possible which, in this case, would be the Sicilian mob.
"Uplifting" feelings derived from fantasizing happy endings in the face of REAL suffering is just self-delusion of an unforgivable kind. And it does REAL disservice to those who suffered. It serves to detract from their misery in the minds of the public.
A movie that depicted the harsh and un-glamorized reality of what actually happened to Giuseppe would be painful to watch but would at least have the redeemable virtue of crystallizing in the public's mind the actual dimensions of what this poor kid actually suffered. Sicilians are clearly still romantically intrigued by the Mafia monsters in their midst and need something harsh shoved down their throats to encourage them to join the human race. A revolting dose of un-alloyed reality might help them finally repudiate "our thing".
Clearly I don't get this movie at all and I REALLY don't get moviemakers who would deliberately choose to distort and pretty up the stunning tragedy of Giuseppe Di Matteo's short and tragic life to get people to watch their movie. That reviewers would actually APPLAUD this sort of thought process is a complete mystery to me.