Spotlight

Spotlight Date: 28-May-04
Spoiler Rating: Medium

Cinema Paradiso (1989)

I once spent two weeks traveling around Sicily, and I remember it as magic. Time appeared to move more slowly there than elsewhere, so that modernity felt impending and the ancient ruins and weathered streets did not seem anachronistic. The island wasn't paradise (it had crime and poverty like other places), but its lasting impression was an intimate, history-laden, life-in-the-raw brand of beauty. "Cinema Paradiso" conveys the full power of that impression more than any other movie I know.

Giuseppe Tornatore's Oscar-winning picture is a nostalgic ode to movies, friendship, and the Sicily of his youth. Spanning about 40 years, the story details the formative events in the life of its hero Salvatore, whom we first see as a middle-aged man living in Rome (Jacques Perrin). An unexpected phone call causes Salvatore to flash back to his boyhood in the Sicilian town of Giancaldo. With a grieving mother and a father lost in the war, young "Toto" (the adorable Salvatore Cascio) nurtures his spirit by spending as much time as he can at the local moviehouse, Cinema Paradiso. After some struggle his devotion earns him the patronage and friendship of the Paradiso's projectionist, Alfredo (Philippe Noiret), who imparts to him wisdom derived from films and a poor man's contemplation. This wisdom has a great effect on Toto as he grows older (played by Marco Leonardi), falls deeply in love with an elusive blonde (Agnese Nano), and makes crucial decisions about his future. As the mature Salvatore looks back upon Alfredo's influence on his life, he decides to return to his hometown to see if he can find any trace of the past that haunts and defines him.

The first half of "Cinema Paradiso," which relates Toto's boyhood adventures, is pure gold. Tornatore lays open the very soul of Giancaldo: its physical beauty; its economic, political, and social tensions; its quiet seclusion; its sense of community. Using the theater as the focal point of the town, he also delineates the particular quirks and follies of several of its citizens, like the daft fellow who thinks he owns the piazza or the priest who screens the films in advance to censor all images of sexuality, including kissing (Leopoldo Trieste). Against this backdrop, the central relationship between the bright-eyed, impish Toto and the cynical, aging Alfredo seems unusual but entirely believable. In a place with a lot of character but little potential, each needs exactly what the other has to offer.

The story becomes more formulaic as it follows Toto into adulthood, but Tornatore practices what he preaches: he uses highly dramatic elements to illustrate that the biggest occasions in life seem like something out of a movie. (Indeed, all of Toto's romance is painted in bold, swoony strokes, and I'm willing to bet that Tornatore remembers his first love in exactly that way.) By the time the recurring allusions to the Odyssey start appearing the grip of nostalgia has taken hold, a palpable longing for innocence, home, and simple happiness which Alfredo argues cannot be regained except through long absence.

The ending of "Cinema Paradiso" runs a little too long, but the final scene ranks as one of the greatest in movie history. A grand gesture, an act of consummation, and a compliment to the glory of cinema, it's the perfect finale to a tale that celebrates the finest moments that life and film have to offer.

Copyright © 2004 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.