Dorathen Better Late Then Never

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

ChicDragon It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

Sharkflei Your blood may run cold, but you now find yourself pinioned to the story.

Wuchak Released in 2009 and directed by Francis Ford Coppola, "Tetro" is drama about two American brothers in Buenos Aires, Argintina. The younger one, Bennie (Alden Ehrenreich), idolizes the older, Tetro (Vincent Gallo), and hasn't seen him in a dozen years because he mysteriously cut all ties with the family and moved to Argentina, where he lives with his girlfriend, Miranda (Maribel Verdú). Bennie discovers his brother's near-finished play and is obsessed with completing it without his permission, perhaps because he senses it holds the answers he seeks. Klaus Maria Brandauer plays the arrogant conductor father while cutie Sofía Gala is on hand as a young Argentinan girl that fancies Bennie. The movie is primarily in B&W, but with color flashbacks."Tetro" is an artful and somewhat hypnotic adult-oriented drama by the master filmmaker, the very opposite of conventional Hollywood blockbusters. Ehrenreich is reminiscent of Leonardo DiCaprio when he was young while Gallo is broodingly charismatic as the eponymous protagonist. Coppola has always had a good eye for female cast and "Tetro" delivers the goods with Verdú and Gala, although I wish the latter had more screen time. There's a revelation at the end that I failed to anticipate, but should have because everything in the story points to it.Francis said at the Cannes film festival that "nothing in (the movie) happened, but it's all true." In other words, the film's autobiographical in some ways. The challenge is to perceive the parallels. Two are obvious seeing as how Coppola's father was a famous conductor. The other is when South America's most honored critic asks Tetro if her opinion matters to him anymore and he honestly says it doesn't; sticking her nose in the air, she silently walks away. Like Tetro, Coppola no longer cares what critics think of his works. It's akin to Kurtz' disposition toward the pathetic brass in "Apocalypse Now." The critic's name in the film is fittingly "Alone," played by Carmen Maura. Then there's the fact that Francis has a brother he's been known to have a love/hate relationship with, not to mention how his nephew, Nicolas Cage, is a little reminiscent of the titular character. But none of this speculation really matters; all that matter is that "Tetro" is a creative, operatic, entertaining drama. But stay away if you need constant 'exciting' things going on, like explosions, absurd action scenes and the corresponding CGI (not that there's anything wrong with that, lol).The film runs 127 minutes and was shot in Buenos Aires & the Andes, Argentina with studio work done in Spain.GRADE: B

zeuthuk Grass roots film making no big budgets or CGI effects just an almost solid cast reading an original script, guided by the hand of master craftsman, Mr Francis Ford Coppola. Tetro will appeal to those who enjoy the art of film and recognise quality and depth through alternative channels. Shot in black and white, the imagery was bold and confidant, beautiful and haunting, many talking points to unfold. We have not just a film but also a theatrical event lasting 143 minutes deserving of a standing ovation. Tetro is a project surely missed by the masses; it reminds us of what real filmmaking is all about and sits comfortably amongst Coppola's best work.

gradyharp Francis For Coppola has created a major cinematic miracle in his TETRO. The film is hauntingly beautiful to see, to hear, and to challenge the minds of the viewers. This is what great cinema is all about - taking the risks of storytelling to the impossible extremes available to only the great writer/directors such as Federico Fellini, Alain Resnais, Alexander Sokurov, François Truffaut, Jean Renoir, Akira Kurosawa, Ingmar Bergman, and Luis Buñuel. Heady company, this, but Coppola rises to the occasion with this multilayered exploration of family secrets and the dissection of the concept of 'genius' - all in the quiet guise of autobiographical references that make this work more than simply one of his many successful films. He has the grace to select artists of his own caliber to assist him: the cinematography (as complex a marriage of rich black and white and stunning color as anyone has achieved) is by Mihai Malaimare, Jr.; the musical score is by the brilliant Argentinean composer Osvaldo Golijov whose atmospheric compositions mesh perfectly with the influential moments of Puccini, Brahms, Offenbach, and Delibes; and a group of actors whose range of talent spans decades of experience and levels of finesse. It all works to one end, and that end is a celebration of a master's art of making memorable film. The setting is Buenos Aires where Tetro (Vincent Gallo), a writer of plays and novels, all incomplete and written in code and confusing manner - never having published any of his output, lives with Miranda (the brilliant Maribel Verdú), a doctor at the 'insane asylum' where she met Tetro as her patient. Into this shadowy place steps Benjamin (Alden Ehrenreich) who has run away from military school and is working as a waiter on a cruise ship docked in Buenos Aires for repairs. Benjamin seeks out his half brother Angelo (Tetro's discarded name) to try to find out about his confusing and dysfunctional family. Benjamin worships his older brother who taught him all the important aspects of art and life before Tetro disappeared, shunning the family that birthed him. Miranda convinces Tetro to allow Benjamin to stay with them despite the fact that Benjamin represents the family he deserted. Benjamin discovers the writings of his brother and manages to de-code them and writes an ending for a play that Tetro never finished. The play is produced by a small but adventuresome theater run by one Jose (Rodrigo De la Serna) and enacted by Abelardo (Mike Amigorena) and Josefina (Leticia Brédice). Upon hearing this Tetro is enraged and begins to relate the truth about the family that produced both boys - crux of which is the father figure Carlo Tetracini (Klaus Maria Brandauer) who sole claim to 'genius' in the family is his power as one of the most revered orchestral and opera conductors in the world. The remainder of this complex story unwinds the secrets long held within the family and the truths discovered by Benjamin alter his life and his perception of family and love and commitment. Many of the secretive portions of the story are revealed not only in flashbacks of the family, but also in full color dance and theater sequences focusing on 'Coppelia' and 'Tales of Hoffmann', subtle suggestions to the audience of the truths yet put into words by the actors. These sidebars are brilliantly executed and designed and performed and beg for more time on the screen. If the last portion of the film is a bit slow (a flaw comfortably corrected by the presence of the great Carmen Maura as the preeminent judge of taste and talent who goes by the symbolic name of 'Alone'), this gives the audience time to assimilate all of the information that has been inexorably revealed throughout the course of the film. TETRO is film-making at its finest. It demands much from the audience, but its rewards are considerable. Highly recommended. Grady Harp

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU This film cannot in any way be summarized without destroying all possible pleasure in the spectator or viewer. It is a film that is full of various keys and enigmas, each one about what follows or what precedes, anaphora and cataphora melting into catatonia. Let's say that Coppola deals here with the eternal theme of the relation between the father and the son but he multiplies the relation like with a mirror and ends up with the impossibility to know who the father is and who the son is, who the fathers are and who their sons are. He then multiplies the rivalries and desires of all type, sexual, emotional, professional or whatever among and around these men. We don't know who made who and who is made by whom, and when these binary relations turn ternary, the trios are absolutely undecipherable. The father makes the son and the son makes the father, for sure, but in what order and in what direction. This brings us to a far more interesting aspect of the film. The creative act itself, the act of procreation sublimated into a work of literature or drama, into writing, front side back and back side front and maybe some other possibilities too. Then this act is at once surrounded by the ambition, the jealousy and the greed of all those who could in a way or another put their grubby hands onto the work of art and especially the royalties that could be generated by success. And we come to the idea that it takes far more than one father to produce a work of art and the work of art is the son of far more than one father. And anyway this work of art is nothing but a lie and a confused disguise for the real reality that the main concerned people do not want to let out. Better keep a ghost in your cupboard than face the people who produced that ghost with their selfish insignificance. If you like strongly emotional films that do not fall into sentimentalese verbiage and if you do not like too much gore in your tragic films, that's the film you must not miss. So go out and watch it anywhere you can.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID