Category Archives: Now Showing

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PADRE PIO

Producers: Philipp Kreuzer and Diana Phillips  Director: Abel Ferrara   Screenplay: Abel Ferrara and Maurizio Braucci   Cast:  Shia LaBeouf, Cristina Chiriac, Marco Leonardi, Asia Argento, Vincenzo Crea, Luca Lionello, Salvatore Ruocco, Brando Pacitto, Stella Mastrantonio, Federico Majorana, Michelangelo Dalisi, Martina Gatti, Alessio Montagnani, Roberta Mattei, Ermanno de Biagi, Alessandro Cremona, Ignazio Oliva, Valeria Correale, Federica Dordei, Francesco D’Angelo, Piergiuseppe Francione, Juri Roverato and Anna Ferrara   Distributor: Gravitas Ventures  

Grade: C

The title might make one assume that Abel Ferrara’s film is a biography of Francesco Forgione, the early twentieth-century Capuchin Franciscan friar and mystic who had taken the name Pio upon his entrance into the Order in 1903 (his ordination came seven years later); and to a limited extent it is.  Shia LaBeouf plays Pio, but the segments focused on him actually constitute the smaller portion of the film, most of which is devoted to a struggle between socialists, largely peasants just returned from military service in World War I, to win political power in the Apulian town of San Giovanni Rotondo, where Pio’s friary was located, and the region’s long-entrenched landowning establishment.  The conflict culminated on October 14, 1920, when a massacre occurred in the town square: a group of socialist supporters demanding recognition of their disputed victory in local elections, the first that had extended the vote to all male citizens, were fired upon by police, resulting in fourteen dead and some eighty injured. 

Ferrara juxtaposes that political crisis, which he portrays from the return of the war veterans through the massacre, with the spiritual struggle of Pio, who’s tormented by doubts about his visions (and presumably the stigmata that he began to experience at thus time), as well as the strain of his pastoral duties.  A major problem with the treatment, however, is that Ferrara leaves it to the viewer to draw connections between the two parts of the narrative.  One senses, especially in the nervously tactile cinematography of Alessandro Abate, the passion with which Ferrara feels that they’re interrelated, but he never articulates precisely how, and as a result while the viewer might be emotionally affected by the histrionics in both, he must himself struggle to link them logically. The abrupt, jagged editing of Leonardo Daniel Bianchi is of little assistance in the effort.

The difficulty is accentuated by a lack of subtlety throughout.  Despite the authenticity of the visuals—Tommaso Ortino’s production design makes good use of the gritty rural locations, and Antonella Cannarozzi’s costumes have a properly lived-in-look—neither section of the film is convincing in anything close to a conventional dramatic way. 

The socio-economic element is treated simplistically as a conflict between good and evil.  It begins with the return of the first group of soldiers to town.  Some are welcomed back by loving families, others are maimed and apologetic, and a few are missing, like the husband of Giovanni (Cristina Chiriac), who does not appear on the casualty lists but is not among the bedraggled veterans.  His continued absence feeds the lust of Vincenzo (Salvatore Ruocco), the brutal eyepatch-wearing henchmen of powerful landowner Renato (Brando Bacitto).  Vincenzo is Renato’s enforcer over the local peasantry, whom he works mercilessly—in some cases, literally to death—as they toil clearing and planting the fields. 

Vincenzo also leads a gang of thugs, fascists still in a nascent stage, against socialist agitators like young, university-educated Luigi (Vincenzo Crea), who are stirring up the workers. But the proto-revolutionaries are split between activists like Luigi, who look to Russia for inspiration, and older, more cautious party members like Silvestro (Luca Lionello), who argue in favor of using democratic methods to win, rather than seize, power—a division that leads to the frustration that explodes in the 1920 massacre, when the exercise of brute force proves decisive.  Presenting this struggle in black-and-white terms of naïve heroes against unscrupulous villains, Ferrara opts to encourage an acting style that strains for the operatic but comes across merely as amateurish.

Meanwhile Pio, also recently returned to the friary, is shown, in LaBeouf’s unrestrainedly ferocious performance, as confronting all manner of demons. There are flashbacks to his being berated for cowardice by authorities during his own army service, as well as sessions when, serving as pastor, he loses his temper at those confessing to him.  He’s also confronted by visions of Mary and Satan, who taunt him with insults and threatening prophecies that shake his confidence in his own devotion. These are mostly shot by Abate in jerky hand-held style and lurid red tones. 

Although dressed in monastic garb appropriate to the time, moreover, LaBeouf shouts in his flat American accent in very modern terms (at one point telling a penitent to “shut the f*** up”).  Perhaps the intention is intended to set him apart from the townsfolk, whose broken English seems out of another film (and time), or to create a connection with the present day’s exploitative treatment of the downtrodden (a connection accentuated by the film’s dedication to the people of Ukraine), but if so it doesn’t work.  It merely emphasizes the film’s disjointedness.

So do some very strange music cues.  Joe Della’s score is mostly morose, but occasionally modern songs are introduced to comment, with a heavy hand, on the action.  When footage of workers toiling endlessly in the field unfolds to the strains of a blues number by Blind Willie Johnson, it elicits a reaction of incredulity rather than a feeling of rightness.        

The result is a film that has a certain raw power and intensity, but is simply too strident, fragmented and opaque to move us to the indignation it’s apparently aiming for.  We can’t even be sure whether Ferrara intends us to conflate Pio’s spiritual struggle with the peasants’ political one, or rather to see it as a symptom of the church’s refusal to join fully with the commoners.  (Pio simply encourages people to turn to God, and uses a memory from his own childhood to teach the distinction between the human and the divine perception of things.  Other church figures quietly bless the town’s ballot boxes. One might conclude that the church is merely dispensing what Marx saw as opium to the masses.)  Despite all that, the film is nonetheless more coherent than its truly impenetrable predecessor, “Zeros and Ones.”     

In any event Ferrara devotees will undoubtedly find it of interest, if only as another item in his esoteric, challenging, but often frustrating filmography.      

Now Showing

MENDING THE LINE

Producers: Kelly McKendry, Scott MacLeod, Carl Effenson, Stephen Camelio and Joshua Caldwell   Director: Joshua Caldwell   Screenplay: Stephen Camelio   Cast: Sinqua Walls, Brian Cox, Perry Mattfeld, Chris Galust, Patricia Heaton, Wes Studi and Michaela Sasner   Distributor: Blue Fox Entertainment

Grade: C+

The potential therapeutic benefits of fly-fishing for military veterans (and, presumably, others) suffering from PTSD are dramatized in this earnest but manipulative film from Stephen Camelio and Joshua Caldwell.  “Mending the Line” is reminiscent of the blandly well-intentioned fare that was once a staple of network television like the Hallmark Hall of Fame, but it’s elevated to some extent by strong lead performances from Sinqua Walls and Brian Cox. 

Walls plays John Colter, a wounded Marine traumatized by a botched mission in Afghanistan; he blames himself for the deaths of many in his squad.  He’s received treatment elsewhere in the VA system, but has arrived at a medical facility in Montana, whose head Dr. Burke (Patricia Heaton) will, he hopes, sanction his return to active duty.  After watching how volatile he can be, she suggests that he might benefit from going fly-fishing with another of her patients, Ike Fletcher (Cox), a grizzled Vietnam vet who’s been suffering from blackouts, which she fears could be dangerous if he has one while out fishing alone.  Colter isn’t exactly enthused of the idea, but goes to visit Fletcher at his cabin.

Cantankerous Ike is no more enthusiastic at the thought of teaching a newbie the secrets of a sport that, from the content of his home, he takes very seriously, and gives Colter a quick brush-off.  But taking the advice of the old man’s close, and perhaps only, friend Harrison (Wes Studi), Colter decides to do some homework on fly fishing and approaches local librarian Lucy (Perry Mattfeld) for some books on the subject.  But beset by her own emotional problems—she’s still grieving the loss of her fiancé in a motorcycle crash, and his mother (Michaela Sasner), obsessed with keeping her son’s memory alive, won’t let her move on—Lucy initially brushes him off, too.  She soon relents, however, and the next time Colter approaches Ike, he’s not unprepared.

Thus begins what might be called the “Karate Kid” part of the film, in which Fletcher assigns the Marine mundane tasks designed, he’ll eventually explains, to teach him the most valuable lesson in fly-fishing—no, not patience, but humility.  Then they’re off to Fletcher’s favorite fishing spot, and Colter is taught to “mend the line”—manipulating the line after the throw to enhance the possibility of attracting the fish to the lure.  John is surprised that Ike always releases a caught fish back into the water, saying his military experience persuaded him never to kill again.  That’s a sign of the trauma he too suffered; like Colter he first turned to alcohol to dampen his guilt, until he discovered the serenity fly-fishing brought him.  It’s also an indication that he still needs some sort of closure as much as John and Lucy do.

Things come to a head for all of them in the film’s last act, which becomes a sort of redemption tale three times over.  It would be untrue to say that the twists avoid cloyingness and contrivance, including a good deal of backsliding on Colter’s part, but if Walls, Cox and Mattfeld can’t make them all convincing, they at least make them go down relatively painlessly; Cox even brings conviction to some awfully obvious monologues.  A coda also allows for Colter to become a teacher of sorts, bringing the joys of the sport he’s mastered to others—not just Lucy, but other vets, like the dejected Kovacs (Chris Galust).

There’s some lovely Montana scenery in “Mending the Line”—a title, of course, intended to convey a double meaning–and cinematographer Eva M. Cohen makes the most of it in her widescreen images.  Elsewhere her work is proficient but unremarkable, as is that of production designer Freddy Waff.  Will Torbett’s editing tends toward the sluggish, as does Caldwell’s direction—the film demands considerable patience—and Bill Brown’s score is positively syrupy.  (One sighs in relief when it goes silent.)

But the ensemble helps one get over the maudlin parts.  Heaton is rather wasted and Sasner overacts, but Studi brings some whimsical humor to Harrison.  And while Mattfeld can be stiff, Walls manages to put over even the sequence in which a visit to a buzzy bar brings on flashbacks to Afghanistan and sends him back to the bottle. 

But it’s Cox who makes the decidedly calculating and predictable movie as watchable as it is.  Stardom has come late to the actor, who has long been reliable in supporting character roles as well as stunning in a few lead ones (like Michael Cuesta’s “L.I.E.,” which also provided Paul Dano with his first opportunity to shine), but better late than never.  He makes Ike Fletcher, for all his orneriness, a character you want to spend some time with, especially when he’s casting his line—and then mending it.