Wednesday, April 2, 2008

The Italian

Finally saw the film. It was almost perfect. I wonder why Euros can make films like this one, or any of, say, Kieslowski's films, but they don't make the Hollywood blockbuster type things. Anyone who could make Red could make, oh, we'll say Fool's Gold only a little better, and get paid a helluva lot more in the process. But they don't seem to, or at least, their crappy, mainstream films never make it over here, while ours go around the world. The only way Italian could have been made in Hollywood would have been to show each of the people who wronged the boy in the film getting punished for it somehow, while the sublime ending of the film would have been ruined by his mother being played by Julia Roberts and her 20 million dollar smile (but to play a role like this she'd cut her fee down to 10 mil or so). What made the film great -- it's grownupness -- would have been bleached right out in the name of box office receipts. The foreigners don't seem to use the bleach like we do.