Happy as Lazzaro

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🎙️ EPISODE 292: 08.10.2020 *Review starts @ ~ 18:04 Happy as Lazzaro, an Italian drama film that veers off into the world of magical realism halfway through, concerns the story of, well, Lazzaro, a, well, happy, if not hapless lad working as an indentured servant on a late 70s tobacco farm along with dozens of others, all of whom he's ostensibly related to, though he does not have a mother or a father. The punch one-sentence description reads: "Lazzaro, a good-hearted young peasant, and Tancredi, a young nobleman cursed by his imagination, form a life-altering bond when Tancredi asks Lazzaro to help him orchestrate his own kidnapping." That certainly makes for a movie that people would want to see, in theory. That is also not this film. Lazarro, played by Adriano Tardiolo, is an inscrutable character, almost 'Peter Sellers in Being There' level of blank slate. He could be surrogate for a naive audience, or he could be something far beyond that, almost godlike. This film is a puzzle that you aren't meant to assemble.

This is the third feature from writer/director Alice Rohrwacher, all of which debuted at Cannes. Shot on 16mm and presented in 1.66 : 1 aspect ratio with frayed edges, she certainly has a knack for framing and color...


AND NOW, A "SIDEBAR OF SORTS" ... Without knowing a thing about how these things work, it almost seems like Netflix, who owns the exclusive distribution rights, has banished this picture to some mysterious void. I searched "happy" and it didn't come up, but dozens of movies that didn't even include that word in the title did. The algorithm seeks to know all. That it knows next to nothing, shouldn't come as surprise at this point but, I digress ... END OF A "SIDEBAR OF SORTS"

I won't give anything away about 'the twist'–it's genuinely surprising in a good, unexpected way. My only criticism is that's it too aware of this twist, of its own magical moments and they scream at the viewer instead of gently guiding them along (the church music leaving the church and rendering the organ mute is a good example of this; at once terribly oblique yet undeniably interesting). The movie is a puzzle from the getgo but, depending on when you figure out it's a puzzle, will likely provide different reactions to said puzzle. Also, its own critiques and themes aren't necessarily that deep and seem to function outside the realm of this puzzle. It's an intriguing and highly original device, nonetheless, though the most endearing and enjoyable elements/moments are still Lazzaro and Tardiolo's performance...

Those are what stuck with me.

CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ EPISODE 292A - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 293A ⫸

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