Movie: Cinema Paradiso

Ran across this 1989 Italian film today, it has a good reputation so I took a chance on it.

What a marvelous homage; to love, to film, to life. It would be difficult to summarize the plot because there are about five things going on and five different ways to see the main message. In fact I think it is all of those five things simultaneously.

It's about how love endures. It's about how cinema displays the best and the worst in man. It's about pursuing your dreams. It's about the passage of time. And it's about how life is capricious and never turns out how we envision.

A marvelous, marvelous journey. The re-released director's cut is almost three hours long but well worth the investment.

The story takes place over about fifty years, and has a half dozen main characters.  The casting director did a marvelous job of finding actors who look like the same person at different stages of his life.

The director has (at least) two other movies, "Malena" and "The Star Maker."  I have ordered both, because the previews on the disc looked good.

Also previewed on the disc is "Amelie," which is unrelated except it's also released by Miramax.  I'm rewatching it now.  Another tip top production.

Since I can't sit on a chair I laid on the couch today and rewatched "Cinema Paradiso." What a fabulous movie. Very human, very moving, very fine filmmaking. I was blown away all over again.