Customer Reviews

LUNA - by Bernardo Bertolucci (Import)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The film begins with a brief but lyrical scene of familial bliss at a mysterious beach house on the Italian coast...but the full meaning of this brief unexplained scene will not be made apparent until the closing moments of the film.

In brief, the story is about egocentric opera singer Catarina Silveri (Jill Clayburgh) whose selfless but neglected husband dies of heart failure in their New York brownstone right before she is to embark on an Italian tour. After his death, she decides to move with her 13 year old son Joe to Italy where she is revered as a star. Catarina lives for the limelight, however this leaves her young son feeling neglected and invisible. In perhaps the most authentically realized scene in the film, Joe briefly unites with a young girl his age and uses heroin for the first time. The drug use is in part a way of dealing with his father's death, his mother's neglect, and his own burgeoning identity/sexuality/familial insecurity. But its not the young girl's love that he wants, its his mother's.

As it turns out both mother and son in this dysfuntional family are suffering from a similar malady (loneliness, nostalgia for a lost happiness/wholeness) and the story is one long journey towards a self-discovery that is actually a return.
But there is really very little story here if by story we mean character development and plot. First off, the story is not told with dialogue (emphasizing the fact that these characters do not communicate), rather it is told primarily with long stretches of suggestive visuals. The long silent stretches of the film are reminiscent of Antonioni (especially the Antonioni of The Passenger) and are used to similar effect--the characters here as in Antonioni are existentially adrift and the visuals allow us to experience that drift as they do. This strategy is intriguing at times as it allows the reader to soak in one ambiguous character moving through one equally ambiguous setting and situation after another. The cumulative effect of these silent scenes has a power that more conventional film narratives do not. Of course many viewers will argue that these qualities that I am describing as strengths are actually weaknesses and I can understand that. For these viewers the end result of the minimal characterization is that the characters and situations do not come to life as they should and the film therefore fails to captivate and falls flat. However, lovers of experimental film who do not need a conventional plot nor conventionally delineated characters to keep their interest will find plenty to admire. The ending of this film is one of the most perplexing but also most striking and memorable of Bertolucci's endings.

It would be about twenty years before Bertolucci tried this minimalist approach again with Besieged (1998) and that is one of my all-time favorite Bertolucci films. So for me, Luna is the great lost link between the early Bertolucci masterpieces (Before the Revolution, Conformist, Last Tango in Paris, 1900) and the later ones (Last Emperor, Besieged, The Dreamers).

La Luna for some reason is not much talked about or remembered, but to me is one of Bernardo Bertolucci's best movies. The subject matter is very strong and risky. (for mature audiences only) But the acting is superb, the directing is superb. A must see.

Jill Clayburgh's passing should stand as a reminder that "Luna" is long overdue for an American release on dvd. Ostensibly a story about an opera diva and her borderline incestuous relationship with her young junkie son, the film's real focus wrestles with the question of how an artist who has lost her way can regain her motivation. That's not the sort of subject that sells tickets, and hence the movie was received confusedly by critics and audiences alike. But that is precisely what makes "Luna" a film unlike any other. The dialogue can be a bit clunky, and Matthew Berry is not a particularly skillful actor, but "Luna" is unique for delving into the mystery of why we make art, and for those who care about such things, it's an intensely compelling film. (For years at the top of my dvd wish list, I found a copy in, of all places, a supermarket in Shanghai.)

To be very honest, I would say its one of the most unusual movies you will ever come across, but the situations, the film is totally genuine and executed well by top notch performences. Jill Clayburgh delivers a performence which is beyond any words, you just can't take your eyes off her. A shocking, sad fact of Society which leads to an ultimate sacrifice by any woman. The film has its moments, will make you smile, cry but definately give you it a thought.

LA LUNA manages to be as open faced, and as innocent as the blue sky on a summer day. It makes full use of the method we use to tell stories that covers forbidden love. As an opera singer, Jill Clayburgh's character is only acting out eons of plays. Full, dizzy, deep, captivating, lost as a child. This story is I think a fable. It is gawky at times. It is sweet at times. Both mother and son play martyr back and forth. There is a hilarious unmeant take on the boy finding out the parallel concerning his real father. And Jill Clayburgh is after all AN UNMARRIED WOMAN. She is at her most luminous here, a screen legend, perhaps. Matthew Barry plays her son. Even his character's drug addiction is seen as, though profoundly heart wrenching and painful, an idea more than an act of the screen. I see already. I am putting up boundaries. Justifications for saying it's not really about incest. Thus justifying my having bought the film and seen it and liked it.

But you know what? This film, flawed as it is, takes flight. It's about the moon and mysteries and dilemmas and love and music and hatred and addiction. It's a child's dream, don't you get it? It's as unreal, as disjointed and surreal as as. So played his dream on a sunny huge drawing board on a summer morning, on a balcony of a Saturday. It's every bedroom in the world where a boy feels wonder, because time is come to dream. And it's big and expansive, they go to Italy for God's sake, people dance in the streets and sang opera, including his mother. He saw the way the stage of opera looked so close with the falseness obvious. Thus, imagination takes over.

It rather dances like sunshine on a rainy day. Look at the boy. He's addicted to life. It's a story of confusing love. She finally leaves him off in a strange unknown place. But he goes away from her. The symbolism is a bit much sometimes. The film is happy as it closes. Much as MURMUR OF THE HEART ends, with joy and acceptance. So was in the sunlight this film, almost. The masturbation scene is quite heartbreaking and loving. I guess that that causes more bother than say the drug addiction. As she covers up her son, the blanket that covers him in love,a blanket from hopefully many eyes falls, and we see something intensely really human.

If anything the film is nascent, wanting to be liked, and caught in a chrysalis. It says okay. You moral arbiters of society, listen to this, watch me. I would tell you this story as bright sunshine, on ancient white walls of Italy. He says, the boyish manner this film, I give you my heart. And I give you my imagination before I learned that imagining that even in secret was wrong. I cry for you, I love you, I hate you. Stages of childhood. The film, like the boy, like his mother, know what you think. And they care about much. They have thoughts. They're embarrassing. They embarrassed each other and themselves. The boy and the girl in the balcony of the theater to simply get high, almost have sex. But something occurs, the opening of the skylight, the moon shining down. It is the sky and everything. One of those tiny sliver moments when you feel good being a child, knowing you're to be a child little longer.

I don't care anymore what people think about morality. Usually, the moralists have the most to hide. This is a film of childhood sweet times and filled with pain yes, of the pain of addiction and fear of being very small in a very big world. And the moon getting further and further away. And the never to touch again, the steel ticking of time and stern revolving of the planet. The moon dark at night, except right in your soul, when you put the palate down to turn the drawing away. And he remembered a dream that took him. To tell him the secrets of the moon. Of a summer's day.

My only complaint is the too brief appearance of wonderful Fred Gwynne.

The movie arrived in excellent condition, and was a good movie to watch as expected. In arrived in just a few days, less than the time that was estmated.