MUBI

This film, in special, has attended my expectations. ‘Tetro’ marks the return of Francis Ford Coppola to independent cinema. The film was shot in black/white which I consider a great contribution to the photography and the drama of this terrible story. Maribel Verdú and Vincent Gallo are increadible in their characters, carefully constructed with Coppola. Alden Ehrenreich is an outstanding young actor. It should be emphasized the work of the composer Osvaldo Golijov and the director of photography Mihai Malaimare Jr. that, together, creates an atmosphere of poetry to the film. This film is a ‘must-see’. I’m exciting for the release of Coppola’s next film.

The much lauded black and white cinematography is stunning although derivative and at times too sharp (see early Leos Carax for Coppola’s template). Like most of Carax’s films Coppola’s suffers from a singularly execrable performance. Other than symmetry the actor that plays ‘Benny" threatens to derail the film in every appearance. However, the virtuosity of Gallo’s performance alone makes any criticism of the film in regards to acting moot. The much derided story however (except for a final unnecessary flourish) is compelling. Also of note is the screenplay which is one of the funniest and sophisticated in recent memory. An excellent and worthwhile film.

This film had it’s fair share of problems before it started Matt Dillon dropped out of the lead role. Francis Ford Coopola felt the film was too close to RUMBLE FISH so he was kind of glad he dropped out. But still decided to film it in the same way in black and white with flashbacks in color though diluted. Javier Bardem was cast as The Tutor but Coopola felt it would be more dramatic if the role was played by a woman. Then Francis ford coopola’s only copy of the script was stolen when thieves broke into his home studio in Buenos aires where his only copy of the script was so he had to pay a ransom to get it back.

I wish I could say it was all worth it. Coopola has called this a personal film and it shows his attention to the characters and the drama between them, but as it may mean something deep to him it just didn’t come off that way. To me it came off overwrought after awhile the film mainly deals with each of the characters and there daddy issues while everything is presented and built like a opera, but many art forms are featured in the film Dance, Novels, Plays, Stripping, Performance Art, Music. Yet it doesn’t come off too much as pretentious. The film is truly beautiful to look at it’s a technical marvel as many of the scenes look sumptuous. I imagine it is truly a marvel on Blu-ray. I think I definitely would have had a greater appreciation for the film had I seen it on the big screen. I mean even Coopola himself considers this his most beautiful looking film and obviously I agree. (though BRAM STOKER”S DRACULA is pretty good competition) While I really wanted to like the film. I was disappointed. The film came off as melodramatic a lot of times. I really couldn’t get into the film I loved looking at it but never felt any general emotions. The film feels timeless like it cold have taken place at anytime. Yet the film is too long

The story is of Tetro who ran off to Buenos Aires to get away from his great composer father to be a writer and he hasn’t come back to the states since so when his little brother who is working on a cruise ship comes to visit he is both happy to see him but can’t wait for him to go back. The get to catch up but before he can leave the brother is hit by a motorcycle and is forced to stay by Tetro’s girlfriend where he discovers Tetro’s thinly disguised novel and finds out the real reason his brother ran away

The film is built like a grand old-style classic movie. It has layers as this one character and his decisions affect those around him. As his father’s ego did to him. How each character caters to him.

I’ll admit Vincent Gallo always interests me as a person and actor/director here he does a good job with the lead performance where he isn’t called onto to emote until the end and doesn’t have too many lines. Everything is mainly told about him through actions but he is as volatile as ever. The actresses are all beauties and can be quite distracting.

The film Is rich with many things and I wish I could give it a higher grade but in my heart I can’t it is worth a rental and is a good film to put on with the volume off and have on in the background but other then that I can only suggest it as a rental.

GRADE: C

I can not remember exactly when I first heard instead of Vincent Gallo, but I know I’ve seen two performances in his films and a concert at Paredes de Coura festival is already many years. More specifically, my curiosity about this character was opened when I was reading an opinion article about the movie itself made and performed: “The Brown Bunny.” This film is a complex and brutal I remember that at the time caused some controversy because the film’s end there was a scene of explicit oral sex about half that shocked viewers who watched at Cannes.
Also at the concert I attended was with the belief that this was an artist with a unique style, with a self-centered ideology that viewed their art as just creating your own work and that all production is valued only because it was “painted” himself. It is a point of view on art “underground” where the mythical city of New York became king and lord. A character that has developed its originality and no matter what others say, what he thinks is what matters, at least this is what I think about it.
For all this, I thought Francis Ford Coppola chose correctly the actor for the character he had designed for the film Tetro. The character is a novelist who oppressed the past, rebelled against the family and denies it. But all families have a secret in her past and family Tetroccini no exception to this rule. But the reasons are also other, because there can be marked by events (car accident that Tetro has with his mother, causing his death) that make the difference between obtain the personality pattern or simply be diverted other personalities which simply we do not fit. Issues are raised every day by all agents of social life and Tetro is a good example for us all.
But the film tells more about human existence, more precisely on the affection. The division and antithesis of ties of friendship and family that may be caused not only by our actions, but also the other (the father of Tetro) may be, after all, responsible for such deviation. However at the time the lights go out everything is forgotten and the sorrows disappear. We are human and what distinguishes us from animals is not the instinct for survival, but the rationality influenced by affection or emotion.
The formula of Francis Ford Coppola is 1 +2 +3 +4 +5 = cinema. Maybe that’s why the story is complex. The choice of Black and White and Color is a way to investigate attention. Where we take this distinction: the operating framework for the narrative? The jumps in color set full of symbolism that determines our perception. It is a way of looking at reality and realize that fate is already written somewhere, but the way in which we have there may be a non-linear. In some moments we are full of color, other invaded by black and white. But the state of emotion can be, symbolically, the first one is the antithesis of the second.

Life imitates Art imitates Life imitates Art imitates Life… or something like that in this vaguely autobiographical work. Maybe I’ve got that backwards!

Coppola draws explicit inspiration from Powell’s and Pressburger’s The Tales of Hoffman. I think he also rips a shot (involving a puzzling ax) from his own Dementia 13 that he did for Roger Corman. Though he transplants his artistic family’s Italian heritage to the Argentinian art scene, the movie still feels very European. With the use of black and white photography for the present plot developments mixed with fanciful dance scenes telling Tetro’s story, the movie seemed inspired by Fellini too. And Bennie Tetrocini has a surprise connection with Luke Skywalker.

I thought the camera work was very artsy. Right up until the last 5 or 10 minutes I thought the story was well developed. It left me feeling unsatisfied in those last moments. The performances were strong across the board. Gallo plays a writer who has distanced himself from his family and taken on the nickname Tetro. He has some dark troubling memories that he attempts to therapeutically turn into a script, but he will not publish the work, so the demons of his family stay closed up inside him as the script stays closed up inside some suitcases. Ehrenreich (his face will likely remind you of a couple other actors) plays Bennie. Bennie comes to visit his brother Tetro, whom he wants to emulate, and to uncover the family history that caused Tetro to leave. It is Bennie who finds Tetro’s coded script in a suitcase. Verdu was wonderfully strong and nurturing as Tetro’s girlfriend (practically wife), Miranda. Miranda fills a motherly role to both men. Brandauer is properly intimidating and sympathetic (in a dual role) as the patriarch of the family, Carlo Tetrocini, and his brother, Alfie Tetrocini. Lastly I’d like to mention Maura plays the snooty and mysterious critic, Alone, well too.

The plot involves Bennie slowly learning about Tetro’s life in the present and the past. On the surface, it’s a coming of age adventure for Bennie. But there’s more than that. When Bennie reads Tetro’s script the movie shifts to flashbacks in color and often ballet sequences that illustrate the conflicts and loves of the Tetrocini family past. The story involves three major male relationships: the brothers, Alfie and Carlo; father and son, Carlo and Tetro; and the “brothers,” Tetro and Bennie. The movie is really about how the relationships parallel in interesting ways. In each relationship, one man has stolen something from the other. In the most developed and troubled relationship between Tetro and his father, both men steal things of extreme value from each other. It is all very intriguing to uncover this family mystery and see if history will repeat itself yet again. I expected something more explosive to happen at the end, but it surprisingly never materialized, so the movie felt a little unfulfilled. Still there were many excellent things about it.

Rivalry.

The rivalry between father and son. Brother and brother. Man and woman. Memory and reality. Reality and your perception of it. The play and Tetro’s family. The written word and its interpretation. Art and life. Reflections and mirrors. Things seen not as they are but through a filter, a lens, on a stage.

The central characters of Tetro and Benjamin are reflections of each other—both moths beating themselves against the light of their relationship and their family history. This is the story at work in Coppola’s return to form.

It’s obvious in every shot that the film was produced by a master and a fantastic crew. It’s simply chiaroscuro gorgeous, the frame alive with texture and meaning that reflects the story unfolding within it.

“We can’t look into the light,” Tetro says. Light is the source of the truth, and it can be too much to bear. For a man, for a family. This is why we form an artifice through which to view it, whether it’s a fantasy or a work of art we produce as catharsis.

The film’s answer is that ultimately, life is what we make it. We turn the truth into a story that makes us happy or destroys us.

Easily one of the best new films I’ve seen all year, and Coppola’s best in forever.

I had heard that Francis Ford Coppola’s first film in a decade, 2007’s Youth Without Youth, skewed more toward the arthouse, experimental spectrum of cinema. After his early masterpieces, including the bloated budget of Apocalypse Now, his career went the way of minor Hollywood-fare, like Jack and The Rainmaker. One might have assumed he’d retired from the director’s chair until the success of his daughter, and son, (come on Roman, stop being assistant to your family members and make that sophomore film), showed what he could do in the field. His new work, Tetro, shows an extremely personal touch and seemingly is more the result of an up-and-comer than a proven auteur. While the film itself may be laboriously slow and somewhat of a chore to sit through its entirety, one cannot deny the craft put in, nor the skillful eye used. Composed of black and white stock—the only color coming in flashbacks or dream sequences—and shot in mostly close-up and skewed angles, Tetro deliberately peels back the layers of secrets making up the Tetrocini family, showing us what really caused our titular character’s meltdown as well as how he may still be saved.

It all begins more or less straightforwardly as we see young Bennie arrive in Buenos Aires upon a cruise ship he has been working on. The craft needs repairs and will be docked for a week, giving him some down time to visit his brother Angelo whom he hasn’t seen in years. The eldest boy, now going by the name Tetro, shortened from his last name, ran away to go on sabbatical in order to write. Never good enough for his famous father, Tetro hid away in South America and severed all ties to his life in America, including his young brother, who he had written a letter saying that he’d be back to take him away. Bennie viewed his sibling as a hero, someone in the arts that was willing to go after his dream. As a result, he left military school and joined the cruise ship to travel and perhaps write something himself. The collision of these two men—two creatures that are linked with love as well as rivalry, much like their father and uncle—shines the light on what really happened to Angelo. With family thrust upon him, Tetro slowly breaks down his barriers to accept Bennie into his life, until he is betrayed. The newcomer decides that his brother needs a success to turn the corner on his past, so he takes it upon himself to find the coded pages long since put away and turn it into a play good enough to compete for a festival prize.

My true feelings about the film are conflicted. The first half of the tale, leading us to Bennie’s planned departure progresses in a linear manner and with a steady pace. It is at the point where the boy decides to save his brother, in effect breaking all trust with him and the elder’s need for isolation from Angelo Tetrocini, a man he used to be but has since died in his mind, that the story gets both very intriguing and very slow. The second half drags on and on, sometimes at an excruciating pace, yet at the same time brings some visual flair that is stunning. The colored dreamlike moments, visual representations of the emotions the brothers feel when thinking about the play based upon their lives, are absolutely beautiful. We see the car crash that kills Tetro’s mother, (Bennie’s is different, a woman now in a coma for nine years), but only when we see the staged version do you feel the sorrow. The line on the road of blood, smearing as the body of the woman is spun around in a ballet-like dance is unforgettable. Scenes like that are followed by massive setpieces drawing you in just as you thought it couldn’t get more trying to stay in your seat. A funeral scene, complete with an orchestra surrounding the coffin, a chorus of boys on a staircase, and a gorgeous sequence walking into traffic with cars veering left and right in more a choreography than a true line of cars stuck with me.

These moments had me mesmerized, much like Tetro is by the glares of lights, whether fluorescent bulbs or reflective mountains, calling to memory the headlights coming toward him the night his mother passed away. Helping keep my interest was also some wonderful performances by the cast. Maribel Verdú is perfect as the nurturing voice of reason to counteract the mercurial tempests her love Tetro stirs up, Miranda; Mike Amigorena is just far enough into campiness to effectively portray the actor/playwright Abelardo, setting the bar for other characters to be just over the edge into the hyperreal; and Alden Ehrenreich handles the second lead of Bennie with success, if not a bit rough as any newcomer would be. His turn reminded me not only of Leonardo DiCaprio’s role of Romeo, but of the actor in every way. Whether his career follows the same path or not remains to be seen, but being “discovered” by Spielberg at a batmitzvah isn’t a bad way to break into the industry.

The welcome surprise of it all, however, is the deserved top billing of Buffalo-born Vincent Gallo as Tetro. His soft-spoken voice does wonders in keeping the audience off balance, contrasting his strong temper and multiple instances of flying off the handle. But he also succeeds in the quiet moments where Coppola lingers on his face as he thinks or becomes engrossed in the lights or his own fears and inhibitions. The ultimate secret hidden beneath the surface may not be the most original, or the most surprising, but it does fit the story to a tee. Tetro is dark, mysterious, and, at the same time, full of life. It is not a film I will be forgetting about anytime soon, but unfortunately the reasons aren’t always good ones. It will take a certain type of person to truly enjoy this offering—equal parts film school exercise of cinema at its basic form and overlong opus serving to unburden the creator more than entertain the audience. Probably worthy of dissection by critics and professors alike, it just doesn’t quite cut it as entertainment, not really making a second viewing necessary or wanted.

Francis Ford Coppola’s supposed “return to form” is best described as a waste. It is a shame to know that the director of The Godfather and Apocalypse Now is capable of making a film this bad (not to mention The Godfather Part III). In the film, cruise ship employee Bennie (the young Alden Ehrenreich) is reunited with his brother Tetro (Vincent Gallo) at the latter’s home in Argentina. Tetro has tried his best to distance himself from the past and his family, and Bennie investigates to determine what exactly his older brother was running from. Behind Tetro’s back and with the encouragement of the unconditionally-loving girlfriend (Maribel Verdu), Bennie decodes his brother’s autobiographical play to learn about their father, the death of Tetro’s mother and the troubles that tore their family apart.

First and foremost, this film is a waste of the talent of its actors. In many scenes, Gallo communicates the complexity and depth of the enigma that is Tetro. In a scene in which he visits Bennie in a hospital, he naturally goes from excitedly surprising his kid brother to yelling and physically abusing him in his crippled state. The comparisons of Ehrenreich to Leonardo DiCaprio are inevitable because of the slight resemblance and also because of the great talent we see at such a young age. As was the case with DiCaprio earlier in his career, Ehrenreich exudes maturity beyond his years, and he allows the audience to emphasize with the anxiety bubbling below the surface. These two central actors are capable of masterful performances, yet Coppola has given them a script that meanders without any destination. Coppola is trying to say something about family and brotherhood, but he is not quite sure what. As a result, Gallo and Ehrenreich often look like fools.

Coppola also wasted beautiful photography and production design. The film was shot mostly in gorgeous black and white, lending this drama to the sort of bleak honesty one would expect from a Martin Scorsese picture. In contrast, the flashbacks in the film are presented in color and in a 4:3 ratio aspect. These flashbacks depict Tetro’s rocky relationship with his father Carlo Tetrocini (Klaus Maria Brandauer), a world-renowned composer and conductor, and a car accident in which Tetro’s mother is brutally killed. The latter scene is shot and edited so viscerally, I almost physically felt the impact. However, this craft is lost amidst Coppola’s writing, which does not always reconcile the unique formal components of the film with the narrative. Coppola instead insists on using absurd plot points to engage the audience in his story.

More than anything else, this film is a waste of the audience’s time. It feels as if the rollercoaster of a relationship between Bennie and Tetro is going to go somewhere, yet a plot twist during the final act of the film reduces what could have been a complex study of familial relationships to material barely worthy of an afternoon soap. He abandons the basics of a good story with rising action and presents us with a climax which into question the relevance of the previous two hours. Add pretentious tributes to Powell-Pressburger films, painfully obvious metaphors regarding bright lights, and laughably melodramatic scenes, and you have evidence that Coppola is finished. Coppola has always lacked focus as a filmmaker, and Tetro disappointingly shows it is only going to get worse.

Film tastes in this country are really beginning to puzzle me. I wondered aloud to my friend if it was the recession that’s turning Americans on arthouse films or anything risky in art and my friend summed it up clearly: “In America, we always save our receipts.” I wasn’t surprised when critics and net bloggers turned on the movie for its ambition, ‘artiness’, and for vitality of the director.

Movies are expected to be television. Gimme ‘Star Trek’! Well, Coppola is a 70 year old man and he’s gonna do things his way. He’s gonna cast Vincent Gallo and Alden Ehrenreich. Two faces that are instantly iconic in sleek HD black and white. He’s gonna cast Maribel Verdu in his movie to act as a visual meme for the seduction that drives two men to rivalry or to form a strong bond (as we’ve seen her done before so beautifully in Y Tu Mama Tambien). In his movie he casts Carmen Maura to echo Fellini and grace each scene with the mystery of Almodovar she carries with her. This movie is made by a master for those who still love movies. He’s gonna give you a movie that is truly a movie.

Seeing ‘Tetro’ in the big screen the only way to see it. If you’re fortunate enough to live in LA then go to The Landmark theater in Santa Monica and watch this sucker on full-on HD projection. Full color Powell & Pressburger style tangos appear on screen as if you are actually there. The expressions are enormous and operatic as they unfold across the screen. I hope to experience this exploration of ancient themes and cinematic love again soon.

I was disappointed – but maybe my hopes were too high…the photography choices are difficult to understand sometimes, what value do they add to the film? The drama goes too fast into the melo, a kind of Almodovar like as Justin A. says, but without the “joy” that in a certain ways the Almodovar’s melodrames are able to transmit…But despite all is an interesting and beautiful film, specially because of Vincent Gallo’s face and expressions and Maribel Verdu’s plasticity.