GurlyIamBeach Instant Favorite.

Comwayon A Disappointing Continuation

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Bea Swanson This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

JoeKulik The Taviani brothers' Caesar Must Die (2012) is a very disappointing film for me. The Taviani's had a great concept here, but really failed in the execution of that concept and the resulting finished film is just unconvincing, in my opinion. I had to stop watching this film about half way through because I just couldn't take any more.This film does fit into the genre of Meta-Cinema, but fails to take effective advantage of the creative freedom, and the unique opportunities that this genre affords the filmmaker.The convicts who assume the roles in the Shakespearean play are not at all typical convicts. Reviews of this film reveal that the inmate theater is an established program at Rebibbia Prison and the "casting" of the convicts for the play clearly shows that. These "convict actors" seem to be well worn "retreads" of this inmate theater program, at least in their appearance to me.ALL of the footage in this film is "staged" including not only the actual stage performance of the play, and the "rehearsals" held in various parts of the prison, BUT ALSO even the discussions that the cast members have with each other about the play, AND EVEN their interaction with the civilian director. So there is no "real" convict behavior displayed in this film whatsoever, because it is ALL acting.There is no interaction between the convict actors, and the general prison population, which is a shame because such interaction would have been fruitful to illustrate how the concepts inherent in the play, and the very role of being an actor might have affected the convict actors' interaction with the other prisoners.Overall, I would place this film in my own personal genre of Cinematic Oddity. In fact, this film is such an oddity, so unconvincing, and, ultimately so irrelevant that it isn't even worthy of Cult Film status. At least in my opinion.

sandover The film struck a queer tone that was hard to pin down at first: modest but deceptively so, economic in its time and almost elliptic but yet not quite so, with chunks of life jumping into the rehearsals in an amateur, tongue in cheek, failed way - was this the point? What were the directors trying to do with this film? For as a paradigm of condemning power or exposing with the jarring effect art has the discontents of power this does not work.So what to do with this film? I think the Taviani bros knowingly or not took Six Characters in Search of an Author and turned it into some kind of Six Sentenced Men in Search of an Other, taking Pirandello's theatricality and sophistry and by pushing it to the extreme, to an alienating, subversive context, this would turn the black glove inside out stark white like in the superb cinematography. It is as if Pirandello and Brecht meet: we have the right amount of what was once called 'alienation' and the Pirandellian both sides of the argument, but this is unworkable. It makes irony or simplicity forced and in the very end the "discovery of art that turns the room into a prison" makes for sloppy humanism instead of pungent, elusive and political irony. In a perpetual state of emergency, when remembering the pure, ideological category of - ah! - life before, or after, or now, this turns you into a bad actor and not simply an amateur one as the film showcases.

lasttimeisaw Taviani Brothers'2012 Golden Berlin Bear winner, saw the screening in this year's KVIFF, an intensely conceptual piece which recounts a play of "Julius Caesar"done by all-male prisoners. Shot entirely in Black & White, the film generates a certain art form extremity of blurring the boundary between play and film, and takes advantages of the indoor settings (which almost encompasses the entire film except for a few shots), the final result is gratifyingly diverting, both the film and the play-in-the-film. I have only watched one Taviani Brothers' film before, ALLONSANFAN (1974, a 5/10). So I need to do more homework to comment on their style or expound on their near 60 years long walk- of-life. Simply single out this film, its artistic frontier has transcended other peers and condensed into a puristic absorption on the material itself, namely, the characters of the play and the individual prisoners who take on the roles, and strikingly their distinctions and similarities are undone in a yet refrained way. There are affluent theatrical nuisances in the film, although it only runs a scant 76 minutes, the film successfully conveys its ethos and every second counts. Salvatore Striano stars the leading role as Bruto, his rough-edged dedication is imperfect but authentic, other supporters, the stand-outs are Cosimo Rega's Cassio and Juan Dario Bonetti's Decio, but by and large the amateur antics are put into the right place, and the absorbing original score by Giuliano Taviani and Carmelo Travia also lifts the film into a great adaption from Shakespeare's cannon. It's a true blessing to justify the fact that directors could surpass themselves even at their octogenarian years.

Jan Grunow I saw the world premiere of this movie at the Berlinale, where it won the golden bear last night. The movie is not bad, but also not special. The basic idea -real prison inmates play Shakespeares "Julius Caerar"- makes the movie interesting and the impressive acting makes you often forget, what fate those men face and what brought them to prison (murder, mafia-crimes etc). But since you know all that from the promotion already, the movie sometimes just leads up to watching an old Shakespeare-play, which we also already know. Just some philosophic aspects (at the end) and the idea of not showing the actual play, but the criminals only practicing it most of the time, is very entertaining.