After all these years, true to form, Coppola still continues his experimentation with cinema. The beautiful black and white cinematography (with some strange emphasis on flashing lights), and the soundtrack (at times synchronized with the characters' facial gestures!) prove a grandmaster is at work here. Apparently the story is Coppola's semi-autobiography, but autobiographers should know that their life stories may not be as interesting to others as they are to themselves - and that is where Tetro fails. The Almodovar-like ending, where some strange hateful family relationship is revealed, was hard to stomach. But I still loved the cinematography.
Mo says:
I didn’t know that , Is it his real biography? became interesting !
ReplyDeleteI liked black & white too and when I saw laptop I was shocked and came back to present!but honesty I saw the movie because of Coppola and more honest that if I didn’t knew this I couldn’t figure out the movie belongs to him. It’s so bad that his recent works almost always are compared with those masterpieces of Godfather & Dracula and in front of them the new ones absolutely would fade.I think We should quit this habit and forget the past !
This is what Ebert says in his review, about how autobiographical the movie is:
ReplyDelete""Tetro" may be the most autobiographical film Francis Ford Coppola has made. He said at Cannes "nothing in it happened, but it's all true." I guess I know what that means. He could be describing any "autobiographical" film or novel. The pitfall is in trying to find parallels: Coppola had a father who was a famous conductor, he has a brother he has sometimes argued with, his sister Talia Shire somewhat resembles the heroine of this film, his nephew Nicolas Cage somewhat resembles the character Tetro, and on and on. All meaningless."
So "Tetro" isn't necessarily Copolla's life story, but I guess his life experiences were a source of inspiration for the movie.
Although I agree we shouldn't be comparing Copolla's (or any other director's) movies to evaluate a current movie, I still believe the director's name is a great selling point to watch the movie - and that creates expectations for us to be watching the movie. We're trusting your name, so don't betray our trust. I can't imagine seeing movies like "The Terminal" or "Che", if names such as Spielberg or Soderbergh weren't attached to them.
That's why I automatically expect to be compensated. The comparisons are unintentional.