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Kaos
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| Year: |
1984
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Director: |
Paolo Taviani, Vittorio Taviani
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| Stars: |
Margarita Lozano, Orazio Torrisi, Carlo Cartier, Biagio Barone, Laura Mollica, Salvatore Rossi, Franco Scaldati, Pasquale Spadola, Claudio Bigagli, Massimo Bonetti, Enrica Maria Modugno, Anna Malvica, Regina Bianchi, Laura De Marchi, Giovanna Taviani
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| Genre: |
Comedy, Drama |
| Rating: |
  6 (from 1 vote) |
| Review: |
At the turn of the nineteenth century in Sicily, a group of peasants were relaxing on the side of a steep hill when they noticed a crow sitting on a nest nearby. They were so fascinated by this bird that they began to abuse it, especially when they found out it was not a female but a male, which both offended and amused them since they didn't like the idea of a man doing what they regarded as women's work. Therefore they picked the creature up and began to torture it, one man holding it by its feet while the others tried to hit it with its own eggs until one of the others took it away and tied a bell around its neck, letting it go to ring music across the skies where it gets a literal bird's eye view of the people below...
Well, that’s not a very nice way to start a film, especially if you’re a bird lover, but that's how the Taviani Brothers kicked off Kaos, their adaptation, excuse me, their free adaptation of stories by Luigi Pirandello, as indicated by the opening credits which prepare you for not perhaps a version of the texts to the very letter, but more taken as a jumping off point to muse over issues of class, superstition and nature among other things. They certainly took their time, stretching the film out to over three hours in length and taking in five separate stories, not including the short introduction but reaching an epilogue featuring a representation of the actual Pirandello who leaves things on a meditative note.
It was only fitting when the rest of what had gone before had provided so much food for thought, but that was not to say the work was perfect, as it was easy to get wrapped up in the striking visuals, a regular component of their movies when they preferred to explore their native Italy and find various locations, especially around Sicily, that would not look quite like anywhere else. They were well aware of how captivating these visuals could be, and it was true to say they took up the slack when the plots of the five tales were not quite as tight as they could have been: this wasn't exactly an anthology movie of Roald Dahl yarns with a twist to leave you reeling (or otherwise, if you saw what was coming).
The first story that crow settled on was of an ageing mother who wanted to contact her two sons who had emigrated to the United States; she gets her remaining, often shunned child to write a letter she dictates and seeks out the local emigrants headed across the Atlantic to have them post the missive once they get there, the trouble with that being the writing is an unintelligible scribble. Next was the closest the Tavianis got to horror (unless you're a crow) as a young husband reveals to his equally young wife that he is a werewolf, or at least he goes bonkers when there's a full moon, which was diverting enough, especially when the wife turns to other resorts to achieve her satisfaction, but like too many of the narratives here they tended to fall apart in the last minute when they went unresolved.
It could be the case that Kaos (named after Pirandello's place of origin rather than a comment on his abilities with coherent writing) was not about the eventual conclusion, it was about what you could draw from the information you had. The most entertaining segment, though it was also the most predictable, saw a tyrannical landowner and olive grower have a huge, expensive jar made which ends up broken. A hunchback (important detail, there) promises to fix the damage, only to get stuck in the receptacle in the process, so how does he get out without the owner breaking it once again, this time irreparably? This and the following part concerned themselves with class, as that fourth bit had another rich man denying the poorest a plot of land to bury their dead, which rambled on as the least satisfying section, waiting for the death of one character that draws out the drama to less than interesting results. That epilogue saved the day, however, a snippet of nostalgia that leaves us ruminating on the past, and what we can do to preserve it, if indeed we can. Music by Nicola Piovani.
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| Reviewer: |
Graeme Clark
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