I loved the movie but I left the theatre with almost a nervous breakdown from cell phones ringing (the first one I tried to block out, but the next ring a man answered and carried on a conversation,) the lady next to me talked incessantly and wore a device that emitted a squeaking eep…eep…every few minutes. During The Others I was lucky enough to sit far enough away from someone wearing the same eep,,,eeping device, so I only heard it now and then.

The latest trend in movies is to eliminate background music and have silence during the actors’ close up scenes, one on one dialogue. In an interview The Others director Amenabar said he deliberately eliminated background music because he likes silence. Artistically, he has a point. But in the modern world, electronics manufacturers have the upper hand and I feel like the sheep in a psyche lab experiment. You know, they frustrated a group of sheep into a nervous breakdown, all the while having a clock tick in the background. Then they put the sheep out to pasture. After a year they brought them back into the laboratory and started the clock ticking again—they promptly had a nervous breakdown. That’s the way Captain Corelli’s Mandolin left me. I love movies and usually see them on the weekend, but the next day, Sunday, I couldn’t go back and I couldn’t go this weekend either. Listening to NPR today there was a story about fish and depth sounding and there was a constant eep…eep. Is this a new trend? The future…incessant beeping and eeping? Are they going to invent filtering devices for that particular wave length?

I loved the movie, I like Nicolas Cage and I think Penelope Cruz (Pelagia) is the prettiest and the best actress of the young Latin ladies. And Greece is my unrealized dream escape. And after the eeping oh, for an uninhabited Greek isle. Cruz and Cage had the romantic chemistry together and their closeup scenes were well spoken and acted. There was complete silence (except for the theatre audience) during these scenes but beautiful background scenery, a rustic Greek wood and stone house surrounded by trees, a winding path down to a blue ocean, white capped waves rolling onto a sandy beach surrounded by cliffs.

Except for when Corelli played the mandolin and sang, during a few transitional scenes and at the end of the movie all the dialogue was unaccompanied by music. (Oh, please, bring back the music). There was a beautiful theme to the movie which swelled at the end. I wish it had played all the way through.

Some people thought the premise a bit unrealistic—a mandolin playing, opera singing Italian soldier as part of an invading army on the Greek Island of Cephallonia during World War II. But I didn’t. Having an Italian relative I enjoyed seeing the “enemy” soldiers portrayed as human men pulled into the conflict, inducted by their homeland nations. I recalled him telling me how he had been in the Italian army in a German concentration camp. I never understood why because I thought the Germans and Italians were on the same side until I saw “Corelli” and the surrender of Mussolini resulting in the executing and imprisonment of Italian soldiers. In “Corelli” a German officer is portrayed as caught between his feelings of friendship for the Italians and his orders from his superiors to execute them. I remember him telling me when he was in the camp his German officer used to say, “I don’t care what you guys do. Before I they drafted me, I was a shoe salesman."

The Italians invade Greece, boy meets girl (Corelli and Cruz), she is already engaged to a handsome Greek boy (Christian Bale), but he has to leave to fight the Italians in Albania. Her father (John Hurt) is a doctor and she is learning from him to follow in his footsteps. Italian officers are to be quartered in Greek homes and her father makes a deal with them to lodge Corelli in return for medical supplies. She resents him at first but later falls in love with him because of his nice personality and fun loving attitude. From the perspective of the Italians in Greece, it seems to be a peaceful occupation, with scenes of beach parties and a musical show put on by Captain Corelli’s soldiers whom he has instructed must all sing. He even gets a German officer to sing with them. But with Mussolini’s surrender all this changes. The Germans invade, the Italians rebel with the Greeks but are put down and massacred. If this isn’t enough, several years later a devastating earthquake strikes the island.

John Hurt plays the part of the physician father with the mixture of fatherly love, a practical view of the situation he and his daughter are in, and, without saying so directly, conveys with his expression how he feels about the developing love between his daughter and the Italian captain. It’s good to see Christian Bale playing a sympathetic, heroic character for a change. He seemed to be type cast as a cold, hateful character. Here, he is a strong young man loyal to his country, yet able to extend a helping hand to his former enemy Corelli, who now has become a rival for his fiancé.

As far as who gets the girl, what happens to Corelli, you’ll just have to see the movie. I don’t know, maybe case the audience ahead of time to listen to who’s wearing what squeaking, ringing device.



Recommended:
Yes

Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 9 - 12