Three Brothers [1981]

 Rosi’s melancholic film Three Brothers is a tale of grief, familial convergence and attempted reconciliations, as well as one of anger, disillusionment and resignation. These made it a quietly meditative exercise that’s alternately brooding and lyrical, and punctuated with flashes of riveting political commentary – through allusions, arguments and anecdotal footage – that contextualized the interlocking personal stories. This was, therefore, closer to his majestic preceding film Christ Stopped at Eboli rather than his blazing prior works, in that politics inherently shaped the elegiac proceedings without foregrounding them. The titular brothers are Raffaele (Philippe Noiret), a well-known, prosaic, middle-aged judge in Rome who’s considering presiding over a high-profile trial involving the Red Brigade that could invite danger for him; Rocco (Vittorio Mezzogiorno), a religious and reticent man who works at a correctional facility for troubled youth in Naples; and Nicola (Michele Placido), a shopfloor worker at an auto factory in Turin actively engaged in labour union actions, and facing marital breakdown. Upon their mother’s demise, their father – the elderly Donato (Charles Vanel), who resides in a farm in Southern Italy – summons them for the funeral. While that gives a rare chance for them to revisit a place and reconnect with its inhabitants who they’d left behind long back, it also engenders simmering undercurrents – particularly between Raffaele and Nicola – on account of their diametrically different backgrounds. The opposing forces evoked by their homecoming were alternated with startling flashforward sequences, poignant ruminations by Donato who’s increasingly lost in his memories, and Nicola’s young daughter captivated by the bucolic rhythms of this rustic milieu. Filled with gorgeously framed images, the film served predominantly as an observational portraiture, despite the underlying zeitgeist, politics and violence.

Director: Francesco Rosi

Genre: Drama/Family Drama

Language: Italian

Country: Italy