Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.
Padre Padroni (“My father My Master”) is the story of a Sardinian shepherd who struggles against the constraints of a highly patriarchal society to find his own way in the world. It is a testament to the emancipating potential of education. It is also a film that elicits highly mixed viewer responses.
Historical Background: The Taviani brothers, Paolo and Vittorio, were both born in San Miniato, Italy, near the city of Pisa. The older brother, Vittorio was born in 1929 and his younger brother twenty-two months later in 1931. Both graduated from the University of Pisa and then gained experience in filmmaking as screenwriters and in other technical capacities. They began their collaboration as co-directors with a series of documentaries in the late fifties. In the early sixties, they collaborated with Valentino Orsini to make A Man for Burning (1962) and I fuorilegge del matrimonio (1963). In 1967, they made a documentary called The Subversives about the effect of the death of Togliatti on leftwing politics in Italy. That effort was followed by Under the Sign of Scorpio (1968), which was a parable contrasting utopian ideals with reality in the political process. They continued their emphasis on leftwing, revolutionary politics with St. Michael Had a Rooster (1972), which was an adaptation of a short story by Tolstoy, and Allonsanfan (1974).
The Taviani brothers then entered the most successful period of their careers. Padre Padroni (1977) earned them the Palme d’Or at Cannes. After The Meadow (1979), they directed The Night of the Shooting Stars (1981), which is a fable pertaining to the threat of last-ditch Nazi reprisal atrocities during the waning days of World War II in Tuscany. The Tavianis followed with two additional films in the eighties, Chaos (1984) and Good Morning Babylon (1987). The Elective Affinities (1996) is probably the best of their films made since 1987. Their style is partly reminiscent of the Italian neo-realists, including an emphasis on social concerns and documentary-like material, but they are far more modern in their visual and aural techniques than were the neo-realists of the 1940’s.
The Story: The story is based on an autobiographical memoir by Gavino Kedda, who appears in the flesh at the beginning and at the end of the film. The young Gavino (Fabrizio Forte) is born into poverty in Sardinia. His father is a shepherd, barely able to produce enough to feed his family. As the oldest son, Gavino is expected to work for his father. In this highly patriarchal agrarian society, every young man has a “master,” whether it is his own father or another man for whom he works. Elementary education is supposed to be compulsory throughout Italy at this time, but Gavino is nevertheless removed from his classroom by his authoritarian father (Omero Antonutti). The poor traumatized Gavino leaves behind just a puddle of urine by which to be remembered by his classmates. Gavino must assume the duties of a shepherd and guard the family’s flock of sheep, from snakes, foxes, and bandits, in a remote highland pasture, when his father has to deliver the milk to market or conduct other business. The boy is required to live in a small hut, most of the time in utter solitude. On rare occasions, Gavino finds diversion in one manner or another. He finds another boy with a similar assignment in a nearby meadow. Gavino observes the boy having sex with a donkey. When the two lads are discovered together, each is brutally beaten by their respective fathers for neglecting their duties. With nothing else to break the monotony of the days and nights, Gavino resorts to frequent masturbation.
Moving ahead a dozen years or so, Gavino (Saverio Marconi) is now a strapping young man but still ensconced in the remote pasture. One day a man and a boy walk by, having lost their way. The boy is playing an accordion and transporting another. Gavino trades two lambs for an accordion, though it is in poor condition. At least he will now have music. Gavino constructs a fabrication about bandits stealing the two sheep and cuts himself as “evidence”, but his father punishes him anyway by cutting his rations.
Gavino wants to emigrate from Sardinia to Germany, where there is need for laborers, along with a group of other young men of the village. The emigration laws require that he have the permission of his father. Gavino is led to believe that he has received that permission, but his father did not sign the form and Gavino is too illiterate to recognize the ruse. He is forced to return home with his tail between his legs and suffer the indignity of being laughed at by his entire family.
The family fortunes take a momentary turn for the better when a local landowner is murdered by a rival in a feud. The dead man’s widow fears for her own life as well and decides to move away to live with relatives. Gavino’s parents take on the task of preparing the corpse, arranging the funeral, and selling the family’s property, in exchange for which they are allowed to assume ownership of an olive grove. Their good fortune is short-lived, however, because a severe frost soon destroys the orchards throughout the region, including theirs.
Unable to sustain his family, Gavino’s father decides to sell off his herd and all their property except a garden and send each of his children to work to support the family. One daughter is sent to be a servant and two younger sons become laborers. Gavino’s father decides that Gavino will go into the army and learn a trade, to add to the family’s prestige. In order to volunteer, however, Gavino must have an elementary education, so his father teaches him the basics of arithmetic and reading. In the army, Gavino is penalized for his inability to speak true Italian, since dialects, like that spoken in Sardinia, are expressly forbidden. One of Gavino’s comrades, Cesare (Nanni Moretti), is well-educated and suggests that Gavino improve his vocabulary by studying a dictionary. We see Gavino reading his dictionary in the barracks and in the head (military jargon for bathroom) and repeating words to himself as he goes about his duties. While in the army, Gavino also learns electronics, building a radio, and acquires his high school diploma.
Gavino decides to leave the army at the end of his enlistment against his father’s wishes, planning to attend the University in Sardinia. Once again, however, his father puts an obstacle in his path. His father demands that he work many hours each day in the garden, which interferes with Gavino’s study time. Gavino has finally had enough of being ordered around by his father and refuses to work for him. The two come to blows but now Gavino is old enough and strong enough to wrestle the old man to the floor to prevent the intended flogging. Gavino and his mother (Marcella Michelangeli) agree that it will be best for Gavino to move out.
The family’s only valise rests under the bed to which Gavino’s father has retreated after the altercation. Gavino goes to fetch it and, in a touching moment of ambivalence, the father vacillates between resting his hand compassionately on his son’s head or striking him. The film cuts to black before it is revealed which sentiment wins out. We now reencounter the real Gavino Ledda. He went on to get a doctorate in glottology (the study of dialects), specializing in the Sardinian dialect. He returned to his home village and wrote the highly regarded autobiographical piece on which this film was based.
Themes: Looked at superficially, the theme of this film might appear to be a condemnation of a tyrannical father and a patriarchal social system that permitted and promoted exploitation of children by their parents. It is all too easy from the vantage point of modern technological society in America or other developed countries to look with disdain on a brutal way of life where parents exploit their children as virtual slave labor, where most of the people were simple and uneducated, and the living conditions squalid. The reality, of course, is that survival was the main priority. Compulsory education and playtime for children are niceties that societies can afford only after rising above mere subsistence living.
I think that the true theme of this film is the emancipating power of education. After being torn decisively from his schoolroom as a child, Gavino developed an almost obsessive desire to gain the education of which he had been deprived as a child. He fought through the disadvantages of lack of schooling and unfamiliarity with correct Italian by the expediency of studying the dictionary. He mastered his training in electronics and vowed to himself to continue into higher education. Then, by earning his doctorate, he fully freed himself from the harsh patriarchal life into which he was born. The most rewarding element of this film, in my opinion, is its handling of Gavino’s emerging fascination with knowledge. We see it in Gavino’s love of words, their roots and variations, but also in the way that music sustains him during his lonely hours as a shepherd and, later, signifies his determination to gain personal freedom from his father’s authority. Gavino’s father demands that he turn off his radio (which was playing music), but Gavino turns up the volume instead. The father picks up the radio and dunks it into a sink full of water, literally drowning the sound. After a long and pregnant second or two, Gavino begins whistling the song that had been playing on the radio. Education – facility in language and love of the arts – breeds freedom and once a young person tastes freedom, they cannot willfully accept its repression again.
Production Values: This is a very good film but with some evident rough edges and weaknesses. The narrative doesn’t flow especially well, leaving viewers to piece together the story, basically from a series of vignettes. On the other hand, those with experience with foreign films will have encountered this characteristic before and will know that the viewer of this kind of film has to be actively engaged to take much away from the experience. Those expecting passive entertainment will be disappointed. Those prepared to engage in the viewing process actively are likely to find a freshness in this method of storytelling.
The Taviani brothers employed some unusual techniques for this film, usually successfully but other times to jarring effect. There’s a lot of presentation of interior thoughts through voiceover narrative, not only for the main character, but sometimes for several minor characters in a given setting. When Gavino is removed from the classroom near the film’s beginning, we hear the thoughts of several of his classmates as they react to the father’s prediction that some of them will be removed as well from the class by their own fathers. In another instance, we hear a dialog of thoughts of Gavino and one of the sheep he is trying to milk! Still later, we hear the thoughts of each member of Gavino’s family as they prepare the corpse of the murdered landowner for the wake.
Another unusual aspect of the film is its use of sound. Special attention is paid to incorporation of environmental sounds, such as the howling wind in the remote pasture. There are also a couple instances of the other kind of passing of wind. There is quite a bit of music integrated into the film, sometimes successfully and sometimes not. The accordion music, Gavino singing on one occasion, and a Strauss Waltz emanating from the radio that he built while in the army are successful instances, but there are other times when we encounter intrusive dramatic sounds.
One of the strongest aspects of the script is how it handles Gavino’s father. It would have been all too tempting to reduce this character to a brutally sadistic ogre, but instead, he is presented as simply an overly strict and authoritarian disciplinarian. It is evident that his behavior is entirely consistent with the standards of the community and the necessities for survival in this way of life. It may be ugly, from the vantage point of today’s standards in modern societies, to see a man whipping his young son with a branch, but it was the accepted and possibly necessary way of life in this staunchly patriarchal society. Omero Antonutti was superb in the role of the father. He also appeared in the Taviani brother’s later film The Night of the Shooting Stars. The two actors who played Gavino at two stages of his life managed the job effectively. Saverio Marconi had the tougher part of the role, as the young man, because it was during this period of Gavino’s life that he had to develop, change, and, finally, confront his father. Nanni Moretti, who had a small part in this film, went on to a successful career in such films as Caro Diario (1994) and The Son’s Room (2001). The Travianis did a superlative job integrating professionals with local Sardinians to give the film a documentary-like authenticity.
Bottom-Line: There is a very fine and balanced review of this film here at Epinions by Stephen Murray, but some of the comments posted by reviewers at the Internet Movie Database for this film are striking in the intensity of their contempt for this film: “The film was laughably bad.” “Truly, this film is horrible.” “Crappy sound, crappy editing, crappy acting.” “This move was pure agony to watch and totally devoid of any redeeming entertainment value at all.” “Anyone who enjoys this movie has to be sick.” Oh my god! I enjoyed it. I must be a very sick person!
At least I have some good company. The professor at my university who teaches the film studies course and who is also among the most respect-worthy individuals I know told me recently that Padre Padrone was among his all-time favorite films. I won’t go that far, but I’ll state that it’s a film with originality, substance, good performances, and some innovative if sometimes unpolished technical features. I recommend this film, especially if you’ve developed a taste already for films in the style of realism and if you’re prepared to engage the film actively rather than waiting for it to entertain you. Padre Padrone is in Italian with English subtitles and has a running time of 117 minutes.
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