I'm 23. I like electronica, movies with killer special effects, and far out theories on quantum mechanics. This movie is a placid drama that follows the lives of a group of eccentric family members and their immediate friends across the Spanish Countryside.
How could I like this film? Allow me to explain.
Without telling you too much about the film in specifics, it's a tale of beautiful foreign influences on family, morality, psychological healing, and the human presence of compassion. It's as far removed from an American Daytime soap as possible.
The music in the film compliments the breathtaking Spanish countryside in a quaintly eclectic fashion. Two recurring aural themes are Erik Satie's Gymnopedie and Edward Elgar's Nimrod.
The protagonist, an aging man who enters into the lives of his two granddaughters as they undergo the uprooting form their country home, is a man filled with wisdom and simultaneously passion and ferocity. He interacts with youth in a most refreshing fashion, embracing the slipping of emotion reason in his mind, yet holding onto the wisdom years under the sun has taught him.
Plenty of scandal, plenty of plot twist and tasty trajectory, I wouldn't say it keeps you on the edge of your seat, but certainly washes you with beautiful countryside, delicate and effusive music, and brilliant psychology and dialogue between characters. In some ways it reminds me of the playful interplay between Dostoyevsky's characters in Brother's Karamazov.
There's a great showdown with monks, and town buffoons, and a great friendship is formed between the grandfather and his granddaughters' educational mentor. I laughed, almost cried during this film, and sincerely felt satisfied after the deep, meaningful moral ending.
Highly Recommended.
