Customer Reviews

Pascali's Island [VHS]

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In a finely-crafted and beautifully filmed story, three people meet who are engaged in deceptions of differents sorts. Each one is acting in secret, yet all three find themselves thrust into the very center of their deceptions by ironic twists. Each fences with the other romantically, yet the most cynical actually fall in love. Excellent performances by Kingsley, Charles Dance and Helen Mirren, three of England's most talented and versatile actors. Exotic scenery sets the stage for a variety of passions, schemes and deceits. Mirren and Dance are spectacular in the love scenes especially, but Ben Kingsley steals the movie, his dark eyes mirroring his dwindling hope in his sultan's dying world and his hopeless love for an untouchable, unreachable foreigner.

The year is 1908, the place is a small island in the Aegean sea. Ben Kingsley shines in "Pascali's Island", a subtle tale of fear and betrayal in uncertain, changing times. The violent ending, although hinted at throughout the film, will jar you since the tone till then has been guardedly genteel.

A fine performance is turned in by Helen Mirren, playing the Austrian painter Lydia, a woman in her 30s whom Pascali has loved from a distance for years. He is tormented by her love affair with an English archeologist as events spin toward an inevitable disastrous conclusion.

The clear, bright Aegean ocean reflecting the brilliant blue sky above makes a gorgeous scenic backdrop for the film. The ocean is seen from many interesting camera angles through windows and doorways of buildings, down from stone steps, and straight on as a large sailboat glides across it. The elemental sunshine and the open, calm sea serve as a counterpoint to the scheming people and their sinister secrets.

Highly recommended!

I love movies where the location is like another character (characters even) within the story.

This is a wonderful insight into another time and another place. With the preludes of war setting a benignly precarious backdrop intriguing characters deploy their motives in an enchanting dance of ulteriors and schemes.

The psychologies at work in this story are delightful to behold, the viewer is captivated and enthralled from the beginning!

This is an under-appreciated little gem with a superb cast. Ben Kingsley turns a subtle and riveting performance as a minor functionary and spy during the waning days of the Ottoman Empire. A self-important little man, he files endless reports to his government in vain, for his reports are never read. He befriends an expatriate Englishman and an Austrian painter he desires but cannot have, superbly played by Charles Dance and Helen Mirren, and soon a conflict of his loyalties ensues. The locations are appropriately exotic and beautiful adding to the ambiance of the film. The story examines pride, jealousy, and deceit in all its ugliness. Betrayal ultimately follows leaving our little antihero to live out his petty existence as part of a dying empire.

A wonderful portrayal of a too little taught period of history, the quiet futility of devotion to institutions that have outlived their time, and what Gabriel Garcia Marquez called "The sentimentality of nostalgia". This delightful little film is long overdue for a release on DVD!

I just chanced to see this film recently at a friend's house and what a riveting film it is indeed!
The story takes place on a Turkish-controlled sun-kissed Greek island during the declining days of the Ottoman Empire. Ben Kingsley's character is a conniving but rather melancholy yet sympathetic figure, a minor functionary whose job it is to be eyes and ears for the Sultan. He feels a failure and unappreciated by his superiors even though his pay packet from Constantinople never fails to arrive.
Charles Dance arrives as a putative English archaeologist searching for land to lease so that he might excavate for antiquities of the Greek classical period. Helen Mirren stars as a wealthy American free spirit whose reason for living on the island is suspected by the local pasha but doesn't become clear until the end.
Against the backdrop of gorgeous scenery, simmering Greek-Turkish ethnic tension, and the sideshow of the developing romance between Dance and Mirren, an avoidable tragedy unfolds.
Conniving, greed, duplicity, the interference of the German charge d'affaires, and multiple misunderstandings leave the viewer wondering how its all going to turn out for the hapless Pascali (Kingsley).
I won't give away the game, you have to see it for yourself. The well thought out story line and the command performances of the three main characters demand that you do.

Fascinating movie about a betrail that occurs because of a message that was never received. Ben Kingsley is wonderful.
When will this movie be made available in DVD?

I recently watched this lovely, bittersweet film again, and I was struck by how contemporary it all feels. The overall corruption, the affable cynicism, the constant undercurrent of violence just waiting to erupt at the slightest provocation -- all emblematic of an empire fraying at the edges, inexorably crumbling, about to descend into dissolution & chaos. A miasma of inevitable doom hangs over everyone & everything, as a former world power takes a final breath before falling into darkness.

But even if you don't care for comparisons to the present day, there's no denying the power of the performances here. Ben Kingsley is subtle, nuanced, his emotions in turmoil beneath a charming surface. Charles Dance & Helen Mirren as unlikely lovers are superb, each with his or her own secrets. And Kingsley's obvious tenderness & yearning for them both, as well as his melancholy & jealousy, is heartbreaking. He lives in a world where doubt & mistrust must always trump genuine human feeling, simply to ensure basic survival. Yet in the end, it's that very mistrust that dooms them.

I'm especially intrigued by the use of an ancient Greek artifact, discovered by accident in the midst of a timeworn scam. It's an object of pure beauty, embodying a higher world that no longer exists, offering a hope of redemption ... but things are too far gone for hope to have much effect now. Money, guns, power, blood, betrayal -- such are the watchwords of the day. The final image of a gorgeous, haunting sunset says it all ...

Most highly recommended -- and when is it going to be available on DVD?

What does this film have in common with the film Emperor of the north, well not much besides that:
-I love both of them
-They are great movies
-AND BOTH OF THEM HAVEN'T BEEN RELEASED ON DVD FOR NO LOGICAL REASON.
I'll conclude this review with a plea - WE WANT DVD!!!

The dramatic conflict is created by an intriguing contrast. A British archeologist --turned con man-- and a Turkish spy --turned opportunist-- do well on an abundantly corrupt island under Ottoman control. Unexpected events encourage them to renew youthfully idealistic pursuits which ironically turn tragic.