Poetry
Thompson, Kit
calculated to make the viewer's eyes mist, this is not Amelio's to get by, in which an entire society seems to be (in Robert Lowell's way. He makes the viewer work hard to see the brief flickers ...
...he wanted to dream him in nally broken and their emotions do finally flow...
...Scalici and leracitano are, by contrast, as When Borges Dreamed maddeningly opaque as the kids you often meet in real life...
...all sound and no sound...
...having captured a thief who dreamed a man while sightseeing with the kids, isn't praised but blamed by a I dreamed an ear and woke to hear Creation superior for having dallied during his assignment...
...But, on the whole, Amelio low voices in dark hallways, holds fast to the hard surface of things: concrete buildings and the murmurings of ghosts, all secrets...
...There is also an impediment to enjoyment that is not Amelio's Wanting to hear continental shiftings, fault but is inherent in any naturalistic film in a foreign lan- the moon's ancient whir, guage...
...We should keep our eyes on the faces where so much Hammer, anvil, stirrup and drama is being expressed but we can't resist the downward tug at labvrinthic end, the drum of the printed words...
...In a movie in which all evil occurs because people do as they like or do as they feel they must Commonweal 7 May 1993: 21...
...11 Ladro di Bambini, The Thief of Children is the Giuseppe Icracitano, are professional players or simply cast original title of the movie...
...Yet it is the dialogue in the penultimate scene that crystalizes When Borges dreamed the man the tragic theme of the movie...
...But Amelio presents society itself to type, but in any event they are used as the neorealists of as the real ` ladro," the thief of childhood, the bureaucratic grinde the forties and fifties used nonprofessionals: the pressure of of young humanity...
...This hurts any movie in which the talk is not as in a place where nothing lives...
...Shunned are the craftily placed pause, the significant inflection, the poignant diminuendo at the end of a sentence--all the cunning processing of emotion that both good and bad child ac- Kit Thompson tors give you...
...The lassitude that the kids feel in the early from auricle to cochlea, semicircular part of their journey is well conveyed but sometimes threat- canals winding blindly through ens to topple the movie into boredom...
...RICHARD ALLFVA the situation is applied as directly as possible on the performer with the camera close enough to catch the reaction...
...There is a moment on a When Borges dreamed beach when the girl watches Criaco teaching her brother to swim the man who dreamed a man that is visualized so powerfully as a mythic moment, with the I went to bed and dreamed an ear: soldier seen as a sort of man-porpoise on whose back the boy wanting to hear more stories, rides, that I won't soon forget it...
...you liked," the officer charges...
...important as the silences within talk or as the failure of talk to occur...
...stony faces...
...a crypto-documentary or even a belated bloom of neorealism...
...and full of explanation...
...Jorge Luis Borges: The Circular Ruins Amelio is quite as capable of making a scene work through powerful imagery as by focusing on faces...
...But that makes it all the more gratifying when the ice is fi- "He wanted to dream a man...
...I can't wait to see Stolen Children a sec- little Buddha nestled in the dark middle, ond time so that I can skip the subtitles altogether...
...it never does, though...
...Criaco...
...Pail of the greatness of Open stretched taut and ready to listen Doors resided in the complexity of its hero, the magistrate I dreamed and dreamed DiFrancesco, whose character encompassed cantankerous- the tiny porous wafer...
...The small and few faults of this movie are mostly the flip Dreaming, spiraling cell by cell sides of its merit...
...And yet he is the one accused of being a sort of no idea whether the child actors, Valentina Scalici and kidnapper...
...Criaco's character, all of whose virtues apparently come from Tympanic membrane next, his good clean peasant upbringing...
...You did as echoing in my own circular ruins...
...He makes the viewer work hard to see the brief flickers phrase) sliding by on grease, Criaco alone has acted according of emotion that the soldier evokes from the children...
...Enrico Lo Verso is exactly right as Criaco, but at a certain point Wanting to hear stories children tell fairly early in the film, we realize that the young officer isn't alone, at night, of heaven and hell, going to surprise us, and we need a hero with more layers to wanting to hear my mother's voice his nature to he fully held by a story that depends as much on froth across the world, static-free character as Stolen Children does...
...I have to conscience...
...ness, compassion, tenderness, and cynicism without strain...
...minute entirety and impose him on reality....He was seekI don't mean to give the impression that Stolen Children is ing a soul worthy of parlicilaating in the universe...
...the most profoundly silent forest A more serious flaw is the rather sentimental conception of of cilia--I nurtured them from root to tip...
...Subtitles call our attention to the dialogue, emphasize the night wind, edging timberline it, italicize it...
Vol. 120 • May 1993 • No. 9
