Good Morning, Babylon
Original post date: 7 June 1987
Rating: ✭✭✰✰
This U.S.-French-Italian co-production is a loving homage to films and filmmaking and to being brothers and to being Italian. Which is only natural since it is made by two filmmaking Italian brothers. Paolo and Vittorio Traviani have made Padre, Padrone, Night of the Shooting Stars, and Kaos. Their films always seem just a little bit magical, almost like a fairy tale, even when dealing with the most common of events. The story concerns two brothers who leave Italy for America in the early part of this century, hoping to make enough money to save their family’s business. The family, consisting of dad and seven sons, are all craftsmen. They restore beautiful Romanesque cathedrals. In America, the brothers don’t find any Romanesque cathedrals to restore, but they do wind up in Hollywood building sets for legendary filmmaker D.W. Griffith (played by Charles Dance, who was Meryl Streep’s husband in Plenty, but probably got seen by more people as the bad guy in The Golden Child). They help build the sets for Griffith’s Intolerance, a film telling four different stories that demonstrate the futility of war (and making up for The Birth of a Nation, which didn’t exactly go a long way toward furthering civil rights). The secret to the brothers’ success is their commitment to being equal in everything. But when that equality is upset, all hell breaks loose. In fact, World War I breaks loose. The parallels are clear. The Tavianis consider filmmaking as worthy an art as the cathedrals in Italy. And people are only going to go on making the art as long as they don’t destroy it through war and intolerance. And that’s only possible as long as we are all brothers (or sisters too, I suppose) and agree that we are equals. Vincent Spano, who previously has mainly played teenagers (Baby, It’s You, Rumble Fish, Creator) does a nice turn as one of the brothers. This is another lovely film from the Tavianis.
Rating: ✭✭✰✰
This U.S.-French-Italian co-production is a loving homage to films and filmmaking and to being brothers and to being Italian. Which is only natural since it is made by two filmmaking Italian brothers. Paolo and Vittorio Traviani have made Padre, Padrone, Night of the Shooting Stars, and Kaos. Their films always seem just a little bit magical, almost like a fairy tale, even when dealing with the most common of events. The story concerns two brothers who leave Italy for America in the early part of this century, hoping to make enough money to save their family’s business. The family, consisting of dad and seven sons, are all craftsmen. They restore beautiful Romanesque cathedrals. In America, the brothers don’t find any Romanesque cathedrals to restore, but they do wind up in Hollywood building sets for legendary filmmaker D.W. Griffith (played by Charles Dance, who was Meryl Streep’s husband in Plenty, but probably got seen by more people as the bad guy in The Golden Child). They help build the sets for Griffith’s Intolerance, a film telling four different stories that demonstrate the futility of war (and making up for The Birth of a Nation, which didn’t exactly go a long way toward furthering civil rights). The secret to the brothers’ success is their commitment to being equal in everything. But when that equality is upset, all hell breaks loose. In fact, World War I breaks loose. The parallels are clear. The Tavianis consider filmmaking as worthy an art as the cathedrals in Italy. And people are only going to go on making the art as long as they don’t destroy it through war and intolerance. And that’s only possible as long as we are all brothers (or sisters too, I suppose) and agree that we are equals. Vincent Spano, who previously has mainly played teenagers (Baby, It’s You, Rumble Fish, Creator) does a nice turn as one of the brothers. This is another lovely film from the Tavianis.
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