Rocco and His Brothers

When I go to Sicily, I see Southern California before it was developed.  I see rolling hills, groves of orange trees, acres of vineyards.  I see a place very much like paradise.  For postwar Sicilians, however, the island was more of a semifeudal hellhole where landholders and padrons divided the fruits of their toil.  For postwar Sicilians, the Crossroads of the Mediterranean was a place to leave.

Rocco and His Brothers, a film by Luchino Visconti, tells the story a Sicilian family that leaves.  The father has died and the mother brings four of her sons to Milan to make a new life under the leadership of Vincenzo, the fifth and oldest of the brothers and a young man who’s establishing himself in the northern city.

He is not happy to see them.  He can barely provide for himself.  Away we go.

To get this movie, I think one must accept that it isn’t a movie that about Sicilians.  Rather, it’s a Sicilian movie.  It has Sicilian attitudes toward family, toward women, toward obligation.  As the members of the family embark on their careers and make their way (or not) in the North, their unique cultural point of view defines everything about them.  When one of the brothers outrages another’s girlfriend, it’s the girlfriend that pays because family comes first.  When someone comes home with blood on his hands, the family’s first instinct is to hide the crime because family comes first.  This outlook so permeates the film that I, as an outsider, found it difficult to relate to these people.  Rocco and His Brothers throws me a bone by giving me one brother who sees things in a more recognizable moral framework, but he’s the family outlier: I got the sense that he’s the one who makes everyone else uncomfortable at dinner.

Is Rocco and His Brothers engrossing?  Yes.  Is it technically adept?  Yes.  Will it leave you scratching your head and wondering what the hell makes Sicilians tick?  Absolutely.  Just don’t go to the island to find out for yourself.  I want to keep it like California before the development.

Rocky

Rocky holds up extraordinarily well.

If you haven’t seen Rocky in a while, you may recall it as a boxing movie.  It’s much more than that, however: it’s the American dream in an hour and a half.  It’s a story about a guy gets his shot and makes the most of it.  It’s a story about compassion, perseverance, and character.  It’s story about finding one’s lodestone.  It’s brilliant.

You know how it goes: Rocky, a semi-pro boxer, works as a small-time collector for a small-time loan shark in hard-times Philadelphia.  Rocky isn’t a very good collector because he lets people off the hook.  He isn’t a very good boxer because nobody has ever taken him under wing and given him the training he needs.  He isn’t good at much, but he is good hearted.  When champion Apollo Creed needs to find a last-minute substitute for an injured opponent, he hits on the idea of fighting a Philadelphian for the bicentennial.  He chooses Rocky based on a one-paragraph description in a boxing digest and offers him the gig.  Rocky thinks he’s being offered a job as a sparring partner.  When he learns that this is a real shot, he takes it.  Cue the training montage.

And it’s great and it’s fabulous and it’ll make your four-year-old try to do one-armed pushups.  But there’s something happening in Rocky to set it apart from other sports fantasy movies.  First, there’s Rocky’s budding relationship with Adrian, the mousy spinster who works at the local pet shop.  Adrian isn’t the beautiful girlfriend of an evil opponent.  Adrian is a delicate shoot whom Rocky cultivates into a magnificent flower, just as Rocky cultivates his opportunity to do something with his life.  Second, there’s Apollo Creed, the Champ.  Apollo isn’t a cruel villain from Conflict 101.  He’s decent and smart and dedicated.  Sure, he treats Rocky lightly – who wouldn’t, in his position?  But the fact that he isn’t a moustache twirler makes Rocky’s story one about overcoming life’s restrictions, not overcoming one man.  Third, there’s Philadelphia itself, a mighty and historic city whose days of industrial-age dominance are long behind it.  We identify not only with underdog Rocky, but with underdog Philly.  It dreams of something better, and perhaps it can make its dreams come true.

These elements work together to make Rocky more than just another aspirational story about an underdog fighting a villain and getting a girl.  They make Rocky universal and inspirational, giving it a power that transcends its era.  The make Rocky about the American dream of finding something within oneself that extends one’s reach, firms one grip, makes the impossible possible.  Rocky isn’t just a boxing movie.  Rocky is a classic.

Floating Weeds

An Ozu picture is a state of mind.  It’s quiet; observant; takes the time to get to know people and their place.  An Ozu picture demands attention and rewards the time and effort to get into its headspace.

I couldn’t give Floating Weeds that kind of attention.  I saw it in snippets of 30 minutes or so.  Just as I entered its meditative state, just as I tuned into its wavelength, life called me away to its demands.  This killed the viewing experience.

I perceived that the village in of the film was a hot, humid, tiny place.  I perceived that everyone knew everyone else’s secrets.  I understood who the characters were and I tracked the elements of the story.  But I didn’t feel myself in the narrative.  I couldn’t stick around long enough for the village to come alive and the characters to become real.

I’m frustrated.  The film is technically perfect, and Ozu’s unique way of staging provides much for the eye and the mind.  But I think I’ve learned my lesson.  I’ll never again try to see one of his films on my laptop as time permits.  I’ll wait for his work to play at the AFI, hire a sitter, and sit in a dark room where I can focus.

I’ll find that state of mind.