21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
good movie but...., November 17, 2003
This review is from: Three Brothers (DVD)
Hands down the worst transfer to dvd I've ever seen. If you know Italian you'll still have the subs on because the sound is totally messed up. Dialogue comes in ever so faintly through the front left speaker instead of the center (and all the speakers are providing hiss. 5.0 surround hiss sound. and the image appears to be transfered from a video source instead of original elements. Result: video burps and vibrating black bars. Ridiculous. Normally I fall back and say: hey, at least it's available at all...but in this case I won't. This is very unpleasant viewing experience.
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Mediocre DVD, but an emotional and beautiful movie, May 8, 2006
This review is from: Three Brothers (DVD)
This is a fairly poor DVD reproduction of a beautiful, sad and melancholic movie about life, death, and much else. Three brothers are summoned to their old house in the countryside of Southern Italy when their father announces the death of their mother (whom, we implicitly learn, has long been sick).
The brothers are very different from each other, but all appear to be very decent men struggling to remain loyal to what they believe in, and to endure the very different hardships of their lives. Noiret is the oldest one, a determined but sensitive judge in a period in Italian history where being judge meant risking your life daily because of terrorism. Mezzogiorno is maybe the saddest character, without a woman, without a family, except the "large" one of the juvenile detention center where he tries to help poor hopeless youngsters to escape a world of violence and crime. Placido is the youngest brother, an angry blue-collar worker facing a divorce and trouble on the job because of his political activism.
While we learn about the brothers (and about Italy in those years), we follow the old father (a truly beautiful and sad figure) and the young daughter of the factory worker while they help each other to live through a moment that for the old man represents maybe the end of his life, and for the young lady represents maybe the first acquaintance with death.
There is one short sequence that I found absolutely stunning is its simplicity and emotional charge: the old father is laying on his bed, and remembers of a day, just after his marriage, on the beach. His young wife is playing with the sand, and suddenly realizes she has lost her wedding ring. She is desperate, can't find the ring, and calls her husband to help. After helping her for a minute, he goes off to a farm nearby, comes back with a sieve, reassures his wife with tender words that they won't leave until they have found the ring. After a few seconds the ring emerges from the sieve, and he delicately puts the ring back in his wife's finger, and they tenderly kiss. There is so much love and tenderress in this sequence that it really makes you wish it's a memory of yours! It is one of the most touching scenes I have ever seen.
This really is a wonderful movie, to be watched maybe by yourself in a moody and rainy day. The sound and the video quality are poor, but not poor enough to spoil the movie, and all the emotions will reach you unspoiled, grainy or not grainy images...
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
3 Brothers - an obscure masterpiece, March 7, 2002
If you love Italian films, see this...
The story is of 3 brothers who have lost their emotional bond and must deal with it after being reunited at their mothers funeral. Charles Vanel (Wages of Fear - also plays a great cameo in Rosi's 'Illustrious Corpses') plays their father and Philippe Noiret's Judge character brings in a resonance and subtext of 70's Italian terrorism that plays rather freshly in America post 9/11.
Make no mistake, this is an all-star cast, with no American scenery chewing or faux sentiment. Vittorio Mezzogiorno is virtually unknown in the U.S. and that is a crime...watch this 20 times :)
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