Post by Dracula on Jan 11, 2022 0:51:15 GMT -5
The Hand of God(12/16/2021)
I’m not an expert on Paolo Sorrentino’s work but the two films of his I have seen, The Great Beauty and Youth, had one oddly specific thing in common: they were about old people. This seemed odd given that Sorrentino was only in his forties when he made those movies and also just because that’s kind of uncommon in cinema generally. So it’s interesting to me that his latest movie is instead an autobiographical coming of age story about a teenager, albeit a teenager that seems to spend a lot of time hanging around with adults and if its accurate to Sorrentino’s life that might explain some of his perspective. The film looks at a young man living in Naples during the 80s right when the international soccer superstar Diego Maradona was playing for the local team (the title refers to a famous play Maradona was involved in around the time). I’ve long said that if a filmmaker is going to do the “autobiographical coming of age” thing they should wait until later in their career when they have some perspective instead of jumping into it with their debut film and this is a good example of how that can work well. The film paints a vivid and nostalgic portrait of the Naples of Sorrentino’s youth and a much different version of the 1980s than what we normally see in other cultural contexts. Sorrentino’s usual visual style is also in good form here; he’s not telling a story set in a world of wealth and extravagance like in some of his other films but you can certainly see his eye in the way the film is shot. I’m not sure the film is quite sure where it wants to go with itself once a shocking development occurs at about the two thirds point, and in the grand scheme of things it’s not doing anything that hasn’t been done before, but it’s good work from an important auteur and definitely worth a watch.
**** out of Five
I’m not an expert on Paolo Sorrentino’s work but the two films of his I have seen, The Great Beauty and Youth, had one oddly specific thing in common: they were about old people. This seemed odd given that Sorrentino was only in his forties when he made those movies and also just because that’s kind of uncommon in cinema generally. So it’s interesting to me that his latest movie is instead an autobiographical coming of age story about a teenager, albeit a teenager that seems to spend a lot of time hanging around with adults and if its accurate to Sorrentino’s life that might explain some of his perspective. The film looks at a young man living in Naples during the 80s right when the international soccer superstar Diego Maradona was playing for the local team (the title refers to a famous play Maradona was involved in around the time). I’ve long said that if a filmmaker is going to do the “autobiographical coming of age” thing they should wait until later in their career when they have some perspective instead of jumping into it with their debut film and this is a good example of how that can work well. The film paints a vivid and nostalgic portrait of the Naples of Sorrentino’s youth and a much different version of the 1980s than what we normally see in other cultural contexts. Sorrentino’s usual visual style is also in good form here; he’s not telling a story set in a world of wealth and extravagance like in some of his other films but you can certainly see his eye in the way the film is shot. I’m not sure the film is quite sure where it wants to go with itself once a shocking development occurs at about the two thirds point, and in the grand scheme of things it’s not doing anything that hasn’t been done before, but it’s good work from an important auteur and definitely worth a watch.
**** out of Five
