LastingAware The greatest movie ever!

Glucedee It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

PiraBit if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Brendon Jones It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

dbdumonteil An epileptic young man in a bourgeois family who,as soon we meet them ,seems not only to be living in the past,but to be already dead :they only get out of the house to go to the cemetery;the blind wodowed mother has delegated her authority to her elder son ,a nice handome man who "takes care" of his siblings :a girl who seems in love with her brother -she does want to see the prostitute her brother sleeps with,as though she would like to be her(and thus his) just for a while -, a half-wit ,and Sandro who passes for a ne'er do well to his clever brother's eyes:he is denied everything ,all his attempts to get out of this mausoleum fail (taking his driving licence , raising rabbits )and his restrained hatred knows no bounds .He's really got a chip on his shoulder ,and he becomes almost fascistic : one has to get rid of the improductive population - like in Rosselini's " Germania Anno Zero "in which a schoolteacher ,feeling nostalgic for the Führer, urges a little boy to kill his bedridden father-He does not realize he is in a cul de sac ;his big brother did stay with them because of the mother ,but as soon as she dies ,he wants to get married and to live his life .Sexually repressed -he refuses to dance with a girl who invites him (and not the other way around) and can only have sex with a prostitute,life is a blind alley for Sandro ;as for his big brother,he cannot stand his licit happiness ,he feels the approval of the others ,of the society ,still cooped up in this petty life.As he is not able to get rid of this powerful man who accepts the golden rules,he sacrifices a substitute ,his kid brother.Bellochio 's movie should be seen as a fable ,a transparent metaphor ,not really realistic ,with elements of melodrama (the sister's fate);Sandro is sick ,but so are people around them even though they are not aware that their old world ,through a slow process but inexorably , is collapsing .Epilepsy is just an alibi."Il Pugni In Tasca" took a rebel stand against the family;but Marco Bellochio's fight had only just begun: " Nel Name Del Padre " denounced the Church;in "Marcia Trionfale",at a time the militay service still existed in Italy (and almost everywhere in Europa),the army was hauled over the coals.

PimpinAinttEasy Pimpin places a call to his favorite writer Michel Houellebecq.Pimpin: Hello.Michel: Hello. Who is this?Pimpin: Michel, its me Pimpin.Michel: What do you want?Pimpin: Sorry to disturb. I wanted to discuss a film that I watched. I wanted to hear your thoughts on it. Its this Italian film - Fists in the Pocket by Marco Belloccio. Came out in the 60s.Michel: OK.Pimpin: What do you think about it?Michel: It did have a couple of nice pieces of ass. Paola Pitagora was unforgettable.Pimpin: Hahahha. I agree. What did you think about the film?Michel: Well, it was one of those films where the protagonist rebelled against his family and Catholic values. You know what I think about all that stuff, Pimpin. Nothing good came out of it. Sure, a lot of people escaped their families. And then they went and lived alone. Did drugs. Drank a lot. Individuality and personal freedom. Look at where all that got Europe now.Pimpin: I thought the film was quite slow.Michel: Its a piece of crap. But then, it was made in the 60s.Pimpin: I did some research on it. The film apparently predicted the student and youth riots of the late 60s in Italy.Michel: Hahahah. You really bought into all that crap?Pimpin: I know its a bit like how Indian social commentators use crappy films like Deewar to explain the 70s and 80s.Michel: Exactly. Its completely phony Pimpin.Pimpin: I'm still confused. I don't know what to think about the film. I mean, the film is quite depressing.Michel: Well, tell me something about the cinematography, pacing and background score. That would help us interpret it better.Pimpin: It was a very stark film. Morricone's score was very bleak. The score is played during all the murder and post-murder scenes. It is one of Morricone's bleakest scores. I liked the way some of the scenes were framed. Like at the party where the rebellious protagonist is sitting alone and there are a lot of people dancing. He does not even drink. He has no bad habits. But he wants to kill off his family. The pacing was slow.Michel: Did you identify with the film?Pimpin: Sort of. But like I said it was too slow. The actors were great. The director was quite successful in capturing the claustrophobic environment in which the family lives.Michel: Did you get married recently?Pimpin: Yes.Michel: So you are not to be trusted.Pimpin: Why?Michel: You would have liked this film a lot more during your wild bachelor days.Pimpin: Thats probably true, Michel.Michel: It is.Pimpin: I did think that it was a very personal film. I mean, the director is very talented. He did portray the ills of the bourgeois life and the life lived on pure instinct quite well. I don't think he was rooting for either.Michel: Did it work as a murder mystery?Pimpin: No. I think it works best as the zeitgeist of that time in Italy. But it was quite boring for me.Michel: OK. Is there anything else that you want to discuss?Pimpin: The actors were great. I mean, most of them were better than the ones in the worst Indian movies. But I would not watch another movie because anyone of them were in it.Michel: OK.Pimpin: Read about he Paris attacks. Quite scary.Michel: (Silence)Pimpin: Hello?Michel: Pimpin, you weren't too impressed by this film. In fact, you were bored to death. You only called me because it had an 8 rating on IMDb.Pimpin: You are right, Michel.Michel: Take care, Pimpin.Pimpin: Bye, Michel.Michel: Bye

debblyst There had never been a film quite like 'Fist" before. Marco Bellocchio's exasperating, ground-breaking, virtuoso family drama/existential tragedy/black comedy/ horror film is unclassifiable and brilliant -- an artistic and technical triumph. It's a corrosive depiction of a rotting, dysfunctional family being literally led to extinction (or rather to deaths by coups de grace) like a deteriorating, cancerous organism. Bellocchio grabs you by the collar to make you watch the agonizing putrefaction of a formerly well-off but now impoverished, demented, degenerated clan along with the fossilized Catholic rural bourgeoisie values they stand for. Thus, we meet the doomed family -- the blind, powerless, quasi-mummified Mother (the Father is never mentioned, we assume he's dead) and her four children with Imperial names: there's Augusto, the eldest, tyrannical, insensitive, pathologically selfish, now the patriarch of the family, who plans to get away from their decadent house (Bellocchio's real family house near Piacenza) by taking whatever's left of the family money, marrying socialite Lucia and moving into town. There's Leone, the youngest, a harmless, dependent, mentally impaired epileptic who's rejected by everyone in the family but utters the sanest line in the movie ("What torture, living in this house!"). There's Giulia, the beautiful, narcissistic, inconsequential, prank-loving ragazza who just can't get enough love from her brothers. And there's Alessandro, the central character, an epileptic, tormented, anguished, angry young man who's so bipolar he's alternately called Ale and Sandro, torn apart by hatred and self-hatred, insecurity, sense of uselessness, sloth and an incestuous fixation on sister Giulia. Ale finally concludes that the best way to end all this mess is killing off all the family members (including himself), with the exception of Augusto, the only one in their degenerate caste with apparent "normality" and sufficiently "elastic" morality to join (i.e., become a parasite in) another caste by marrying modern, urban petty bourgeois Lucia.Though "Fist" still stands very tall 4 decades later, it's makes one wonder what a revolutionary shocker it must have been when it first came out. Alessandro turns upside down the quintessential principles of European Catholic civilization: family love and unity (Alessandro hates and plans to kill his family); respect for the saintly Mother (he simulates slapping her and punching her in the face until he finally murders her, which is more like euthanasia); respect for the ancestors (he literally stomps on a family portrait): the Catholic sacraments (check the startling wake scene, where Alessandro nonchalantly rests his feet on the coffin with his mother's corpse, which certainly inspired the unforgettable Brando wake scene in Bertolucci's "Last Tango in Paris"); the respect for "La Patria" (Alessandro carelessly tosses away the Italian flag like useless garbage); the respect for property (after Mother's death, Ale and Giulia burn all her furniture and belongings in celebration!); the inviolability of the incest taboo (though it's never clear whether Ale and Giulia have actual intercourse, he aches with love and sexual desire for her).Bellocchio uses Alessandro's bipolar disorder to make a film of moods and sharp contrasts. Amazingly, it was the work of beginners: it was not only Bellocchio's feature debut (he was barely 25), but also the debut of D.P. Alberto Marrama, whose chiaroscuro cinematography alternates blazing clarity and claustrophobic darkness; of cameraman Giuseppe Lanci (he would become Bellocchio's D.P. in the 80s), who juxtaposes shots of beautiful classical inspiration (Giulia sunbathing in the large veranda) and unsettling modernism (the unforgettable last sequence); of editor Aurelio Mangiarotti (a.k.a. Silvano Agosti), who translates the highs and lows of Ale's moods into contrasting rhythms (the electrifying "Sorpasso" scene vs. the delicate bathtub murder scene); and of art director Gisella Longo, who opposes the signals of old Catholic rural bourgeoisie (family daguerreotypes, old-style furniture and Catholic symbols) with the adapted-to-new-times pop bourgeoisie of Lucia's (Augusto's fiancée) world, especially in the beautiful, Zurliniesque night-club sequence.Bellocchio's assuredness in exploring images, structure, music (a surprisingly succinct score by the great Ennio Morricone) and dialog is astounding, but the film wouldn't be quite as impressive without the powerhouse performance by Lou Castel. With his tormented looks -- a cross between the sensitivity and danger of a young Brando (whose photograph in "The WIld One" we see many times by Giulia's bed) and the scary madness of a Klaus Kinski -- emotional unpredictability and borderline intensity, Castel's Alessandro is one of the greatest young male roles/performances in film history, a "jeune maudit" perfectly worthy of Dostoevsky."Fists" reminds us of the creative freedom of the provocative, rebel cinema of a Buñuel. Bellocchio joins other early 60s greats (Pasolini, Bertolucci, Zurlini, Karel Reisz, Lindsay Anderson) in the examination of the deterioration of the "sacred family" and the struggling-for-survival anti-conformism of the younger generation: families were never the same again after this film (think of Pasolini's "Teorema", Visconti's "Conversation Piece", Fassbinder, Ozon, Garrel, Scorsese). **SPOILER** All is crowned by the last scene, where Bellocchio gives Alessandro's final epileptic seizure such orgasmic climax -- to the sound of Violetta's hysterical anthem to hedonism, the aria "Sempre Libera" from Verdi's "La Traviata" -- that we have to stop breathing during that last endless high note of agony and ecstasy; how many finales were ever this cathartic? When was a scene of death so powerfully liberating?"Fist" is one of the greatest anti-conformist manifestos and one of the most stunning directorial debuts in movie history. Unlike some revolutionary masterpieces, its impact and power remain to this day alive, unsettling, unforgettable.

stededalus Marco Bellocchio directs his first full-length film, and it's already a masterpiece, a milestone in the history of Italian cinema.This movie is all about contemporary uneasiness and family crisis in today's society (only, some two decades in advance). Every time I hear of family massacres on the news, I've got to think about problematic, disturbed Lou Castel deciding to get rid of his mother and younger brother for the benefit of the eldest, embodying not only a stage of criminality, but above all a wrong philosophy, a twisted point of view about life, a failed maturity. Ennio Morricone' score is just perfect, fully successful in his aim to highlight the dramatic potential of the story. Lou Castel has never acted like this, his grimacing and his usage of the dead moments are unforgettable. The frames of the mother's death are like an howl, they "send shivers down your spine". A must-see.