Customer Reviews

Saint Anthony

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Finally, a dramatic feature film on the life of St. Anthony, one of the most popular saints in Christian history. And this film beautifully captures the spirit and life of St. Anthony. One of a series of outstanding recent feature films on saints lives produced in Italy (see SAINT RITA, ST. JOHN BOSCO, PADRE PIO:MIRACLE MAN, SAINT FRANCIS), this is wonderful from start to finish. Daniele Liotti is excellent as Anthony, presenting a captivating performance of Anthony as a somewhat complex man who was born into a privileged life, was very talented, and left it all to serve Christ and his fellow man as a Franciscan priest. Liotti convincingly portrays Anthony as a man who struggled with the decision to sacrifice everything for Christ, as well as with the challenges he faced as a priest, including dark nights of the soul, persecution and death threats, and staying humble in the face of his great spiritual gifts from God, including miraculous healings, countless conversions and powerful preaching. The film also has glorious cinematography, and a lovely music score. Highly recommended. Not to be missed!

The high production values, the beauty, and the superb script and acting are a joy. Here is a profound, meaningful, and consistently moving film about one of the world's greatest saints. The casting of Daniele Liotti was genius, as the man is unforgettably powerful both before and after his commitment to Christ. He is quite simply a gorgeous actor, but the beauty is unquestionably spiritual as well as physical. I found the entire film engaging, and the end particularly touching. These Italian films ( see the one on St. Francis)coming to us through Ignatius Press are fabulous. Reading the subtitles is simple, and the soft, gentle voices of the actors are rich and musical as they underscore the written words. Highly recommended. And buy it as a gift for those devoted to this great saint, or those who know nothing about him. They'll all love it.

I have written two books on St. Anthony of Padua (Anthony: Words of Fire, Life of Light, published by Pauline Books and Media and Praying with Anthony of Padua, published by the Word Among Us). Anthony: Words of Fire, Life of Light is a biography of St. Anthony as told through the eyes of those who knew him. Anthony, as a saint, truly converted me while I was writing this book. So I was very anxious to see this movie on St. Anthony because he is such a powerful saint with such a dramatic life. And I was so terribly disappointed in the film because the Anthony it portrays is not the Anthony of history. The one redeeming aspect of the movie, that I felt was done very well, was Anthony's compassion and intercession for the debtors of Padua. But the rest of the movie was disappointing to me. Here are just some of the things that the movie portrayed that are not in any of the histories:

1. That Anthony killed a man in knightly combat.

2. That Anthony had a girl friend by any name (she is called Teresa in the movie)

3. That Anthony was depressed

Here are some wonderful, true incidents in the life of St. Anthony that were not in the movie but, in my opinion, should have been:

1. The power of his preaching. The preaching he is shown giving is sappy, in my opinion, when we actually have volumes of his stirring sermon notes and lofty and beautiful theology. I could have preached better than he did in the movie.

2. The confrontation with heretics (he was called the Hammer of Heretics) yet his love for them. We have hints of this in the movie but don't get a good sense of why he had enemies (the religious and political controversy involving Catharism is not explained well enough).

3. His miracles such as the poor woman's broken wine glass restored or the maid that ran through the rain with vegetables for the friars and didn't get wet or the band of robbers that went to hear him and were all converted.

A great deal of the movie concerned fiction that is not in any of the biographies of the saint while leaving out some of the major and powerful aspects of his life. The movie is worth seeing, but it falls short of the saint. I hope someone remakes a movie of St. Anthony and sticks close to his life as we have it historically because such a movie would be stirring indeed.

There is a mistake in the amazon's film information. The language is italian with english subtitles

Of coarse I have heard of St. Anthony, but I really didn't know who he was. I am VERY picky with what movies I watch. I will go to other sites and read reviews, and even check to see if EWTN sells it. While browsing movies for saints on Amazon, I took the risk and purchased it. First of all I didn't know it was subtitled, I guess I missed that in the summary. So be ready to read! But to get to the point... I am SO glad I got this movie. I highly recommend it. It is very inspiring and St. Anthony has been added to my list of favorite saints. Also good writing and good acting.

I agree with most of the reviewers that this is a beautifully filmed and acted film that both inspires the viewer and captures important aspects of this great saint's life. My one quibble with it is that it falsifies the instruction of St. Francis to Anthony. He was told to teach so long as it did not "quench the spirit of prayer and devotion" -- not to fight injustice, etc. etc. as the movie portrays it. While those are fine sentiments, they aren't what Francis said. As a result, they risk turning Anthony into a modern social reformer, not a saint and miracle-worker. Also, the movie does have a bit of conventional romantic struggle and drama which is a bit hackneyed, though it too captures something important about who Anthony was.

That said, the movie was generally very careful to capture the deeply religious side of Anthony and I recommend it highly, especially if the viewer does some further reading to deepen their appreciation of and devotion to this giant among saints. I wish there were a lot more movies of this caliber coming out about religious figures.

Everything about this movie was excellent for me. We need more well produced movies about the Saints ... and this is one of them, as well as Maria Goretti!

We loved this movie.

The Italian language adds to the beauty.

Pretty good translation via subtitles.

I read them for my younger kids ( 4 + 2 yrs old). Yes, they have sat through it (not forced!!! ) voluntarily several times. My oldest - 9 year old - loves it. She demanded we buy it after borrowing it from a library.

She has just fallen in love with St Anthony! + St. Franic...

It is tough to convey virtue to our kids so what best way, then through the example of saints.

These modern Italian produced movies are so well done.

Truly inspiring!

I love movies where they portray the saint as a real person... feisty, and not all goody-goody.

Very well done; descriptive and perfect in all aspects - You will love the story of Saint Anthony, but you will also learn things about him that you never knew