Prolabas Deeper than the descriptions

SpunkySelfTwitter It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

Usamah Harvey The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Raymond Sierra The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Zoomorph This film is a long, slow glimpse at the lives of a group of 19th century Italian peasants. Unfortunately it is very superficial and too dreary. Despite its length, we get to know surprisingly little about the characters because the film meanders and jumps around between too many characters without getting close to any of them. The plot is extremely thin, with the story of the boy and his clogs barely being covered. From a historical perspective, the film is lacking in detail and too dreary. Even poor peasants have sources of happiness and positivity in their lives, which are not featured here. After the first hour, when the novelty of watching the peasants way of life wears off, the film gets boring and drags on for two more hours, ultimately leaving the viewer wishing they hadn't wasted their time.

EngineeringMath This is one of the most moving films I have watched. It depicts the lives of several peasant families living in Italy around (I guess) 1900. The movie includes beautiful tales of human struggle in everyday life. It shows very simply and clearly how we human beings find ourselves puny in a world whose unexpected events we cannot control and how we try to cope with them: we work harder, we use our ingenuity, and when they all seem not to work we ask for divine intervention or resort to crime. The movie had a very sad end, which brought me very close to crying, but it also includes tales of love and sacrifice for your family.Although the movie shows the sort of peasant life that is almost impossible to find today anywhere in the world (I mean in terms of the feudal order dominating the lives of the people in the movie), the dilemmas and challenges that the characters of the movie are faced with are very common to human nature and it is very interesting to see how the characters try to resolve them. The main message of the movie, to me as someone who was born in a poor family in a developing country, is that although the nature of human condition has not changed since the dawn of history, most people live their lives and face this predicament (the human predicament) in a comfort far greater than our ancestors 100 years ago had. And this is something we all should be thankful for.

Atreyu_II This starts off as a well made, nice Italian film. But shortly after its first 20 minutes, there is this scene of a pig getting mutilated ALIVE. That is something I can't stand watching. As if it wasn't enough what they do to these and other poor animals in real life, they also did it in the name of a film? And knowing that the animal was gutted for real makes me cringe even more. So much cruelty on the animals, makes me wanna cry and feel ashamed of being human and eating meat.This horrible part with the pig nearly made me stop watching the movie right there, but I still managed to watch the rest of the thing. After this awful scene, the movie improves a lot and becomes generally good but later it gets somewhat boring and dull. Besides, it's very long (3 hours). Even if the whole movie was good or even excellent, the pig scene alone prevents me from liking it or recommend it.This film has still some clues from the popular Italian neorealism: it's a take on the life of the poor ones and the cast consists in real farmers and locals instead of actors.Apparently this is Al Pacino's favorite film. He didn't directly say it was his favorite, however when questioned what was his favorite film, he revealed that he «always liked 'The Tree Of Wooden Clogs'».

RanchoTuVu A mosaic of peasant life in Lombardy at the turn of the twentieth century that slowly moves along for three hours but never comes close to losing interest thanks to the wealth of details and (though amateur) moving performances. In the title lies the heartwrenching conclusion abruptly reached after the meandering and soulful journey that is taken into the lives of a group of peasant families, with the butchering of a goose and later a pig, a marriage, a boatride to Milan, and a dinner amongst the sisters of a convent while the stirrings of political change and repression stay mainly in the background but are there to see. While the focus is on the peasants, the world that the movie creates is more like being there than any other film around.