Word: film
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...stinks" as I hurl the coffee-maker against the t-shirt display on the art deco wall. However this reaction isn't entirely the fault of the Welles, which I believe was named the Real Paper's Most Smug Theater of 1976. I learned to fear so-called "art films" and the theaters that screen them at a very early age, when I was dragged to a seedy little known theater in Detroit to see a "beautiful and sensitive film" and enrich my culturally deprived life. This place was formerly a neighborhood show that had been forced out of business...
...first few minutes of the film set the tone for the miracle that follows. Simple peasants in turn-of-the-century Italy harvest corn accompanied by a wildly triumphant organ, Bach at his exultant best. Each frame of the film could have been the master work of a Rembrant. The combination brought my emotions to my throat where, throughout the rest of the film, they threatened to burst forth like rainbows and flowers from the top hat of a Peter Max figure. And I'm not kidding...
...belongs to the landowner, for which he gets two-thirds of their crops. The rest of the world barely exists for these people. The political unrest of the time goes by practically unnoticed--the families are touched by the outside world only twice during the year or so the film portrays, once when a newlywed couple journeys to nearby Milan where troops march a group of demonstrators to their doom, and again when a village festival brings angry young orators who give speeches about human rights and democracy. Blank faces watch the troops and the speakers: the troops are soon...
This is a film about love and families and the faith that keeps the lives of a group of peasants together. Prayer punctuates their daily lives like the motif in the Bach concerto underscores their joys and sorrows. A woman angrily exhorts the Lord to save the life of her cow; her prayer reprimands a God who would let the only cow of a widow with six children become ill. The Pater Noster becomes a magic spell chanted in Latin by the local healer, and always there are the endless "Ave Marias," with the accent heavily on the Ave, which...
...film moves through harvest and winter and spring with only a thin thread of plot, recounting every day events along with a few more important ones. The result is that you feel the lives of the people, instead of just seeing them. What at first were lumpy bodies with non-descript faces become as real to you as your roomate through Omni's brilliant creation. The work is all Omni who, besides directing, wrote and filmed Tree. The cast, non-professional, which may account for the subtlety and dignity with which the characters were portrayed. Not once was piety overdrawn...