Ciao! Buona sera! You know the feeling when the autumn goes further, evenings become darker and the first quadmester of the University is almost at it's end? You start to get a little bit tired and bored with all the responsibilities you have. This was the feeling that I had today after a long week at the Uni. It doesn't help that we have now more and more writing assignments and at the same time I should be transcribing more than four hours of speech with phonetic alphabet for my master's thesis. Transcribing speech is very slow... (I'm not sure if I mentioned it but I finally got the research material with Portuguese and Finnish speaking family members together. What a fantastic material indeed!) Anyway, there're only two cures for that kind of feeling I was having. First, you can go to see a movie or second, you can have a beer or one glass of wine with your friends. Since my friends weren't available (they are also working on their theses) I decided to choose the first option and I'm happy that I did! What could ever make you feel better on a dark and chilly night than Woody Allen's movie that's placed in warm and sunny Rome? Nothing! And that's also why you are going to get my personal movie review tonight:
Woody Allen's "To Rome with love" (2012) was, from my point of view, a brilliant film. I was a little bit biased this time since I wasn't really a fan of the latest Woody film that I saw. (Yes, I know some crazy Woody fans would like to hit me for this comment.) So let's just say that "Midnight in Paris" (2011) wasn't my favourite film. "To Rome with love" was, on the other hand, one of the greatest films I've seen this year. (Now I ironically have to add that last week we were watching Spider man III so I might not be the best person to ask about films at the moment...) For me this one proved that Woody's still making really good films!
So these are just some of the points I really liked about. I liked the fact that the film was layered. Just like in "Midnight in Paris" there were two different time levels in the film. Moving in time was the main point of the story where an old man speaks to his younger self and tries to convince him not to start a relationship with a young and unstable American actress. Narration in the film also has a layered character as it consists of four different stories. One is about an American couple who comes to Rome to meet their daughter's fiancé and the fiancés Italian family. Two fathers, an old, already retired American gentleman (played by Woody himself, of course) and an Italian mortician find just one thing in common: the Italian really loves to sing in the shower and the American happens to love his voice... I won't tell you more since I don't want to ruin the story in case you haven't seen the film yet. The second story is about a young Italian couple who comes to Rome because they have an intention to start a new life there. Let's just say that things don't go exactly as planned and in the end they decide to go back where they originally came from.
The third story was one of my favourites! It was pure criticism of our time and a criticism of today's media. There was this boringly normal, middle aged man. There was nothing special about him and his family but suddenly, by mere accident he was made a celebrity. His life turned out to be a farce where journalists ask him what he has for breakfast, or other stupid questions. Since nothing special actually happens in this man's life he answers with extremely boring answers. The climax of the story is the moment when the man realises that he doesn't want to be famous anymore. Allan's story makes you think about today's reality shows and how ridiculous it is that we make people celebrities when they didn't even earn their publicity with talent. The fourth story was about the older and younger self dialogue. This was also a great story. I thought Woody managed to capture something important about young people's relationships that are too often superficial. Besides the critisism and even cynicism that you can find in the film, Woody Allan seems to have a lenient and humorous attitude towards humanity. Most of all this film was hilarious!
P.S. I didn't want to see what others have written about "To Rome with love" before I wrote this review so I stayed out of review pages in purpose. Now it's time to see whether the reviewers liked it or not...
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