Search - Three Brothers on DVD

Good movie but....

Stefan C. Kuhn | Santa Clara, CA United States | 11/17/2003

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Hands down the worst transfer to dvd I've ever seen. If you know Italian you'll still have the subs on because the sound is totally messed up. Dialogue comes in ever so faintly through the front left speaker instead of the center (and all the speakers are providing hiss. 5.0 surround hiss sound. and the image appears to be transfered from a video source instead of original elements. Result: video burps and vibrating black bars. Ridiculous. Normally I fall back and say: hey, at least it's available at all...but in this case I won't. This is very unpleasant viewing experience."

Mediocre DVD, but an emotional and beautiful movie

Sabad One | 05/09/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is a fairly poor DVD reproduction of a beautiful, sad and melancholic movie about life, death, and much else. Three brothers are summoned to their old house in the countryside of Southern Italy when their father announces the death of their mother (whom, we implicitly learn, has long been sick).

The brothers are very different from each other, but all appear to be very decent men struggling to remain loyal to what they believe in, and to endure the very different hardships of their lives. Noiret is the oldest one, a determined but sensitive judge in a period in Italian history where being judge meant risking your life daily because of terrorism. Mezzogiorno is maybe the saddest character, without a woman, without a family, except the "large" one of the juvenile detention center where he tries to help poor hopeless youngsters to escape a world of violence and crime. Placido is the youngest brother, an angry blue-collar worker facing a divorce and trouble on the job because of his political activism.

While we learn about the brothers (and about Italy in those years), we follow the old father (a truly beautiful and sad figure) and the young daughter of the factory worker while they help each other to live through a moment that for the old man represents maybe the end of his life, and for the young lady represents maybe the first acquaintance with death.

There is one short sequence that I found absolutely stunning is its simplicity and emotional charge: the old father is laying on his bed, and remembers of a day, just after his marriage, on the beach. His young wife is playing with the sand, and suddenly realizes she has lost her wedding ring. She is desperate, can't find the ring, and calls her husband to help. After helping her for a minute, he goes off to a farm nearby, comes back with a sieve, reassures his wife with tender words that they won't leave until they have found the ring. After a few seconds the ring emerges from the sieve, and he delicately puts the ring back in his wife's finger, and they tenderly kiss. There is so much love and tenderress in this sequence that it really makes you wish it's a memory of yours! It is one of the most touching scenes I have ever seen.

This really is a wonderful movie, to be watched maybe by yourself in a moody and rainy day. The sound and the video quality are poor, but not poor enough to spoil the movie, and all the emotions will reach you unspoiled, grainy or not grainy images..."

3 Brothers - an obscure masterpiece

William B. Chisholm | Beverly Hills, CA United States | 03/08/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"If you love Italian films, see this...The story is of 3 brothers who have lost their emotional bond and must deal with it after being reunited at their mothers funeral. Charles Vanel (Wages of Fear - also plays a great cameo in Rosi's 'Illustrious Corpses') plays their father and Philippe Noiret's Judge character brings in a resonance and subtext of 70's Italian terrorism that plays rather freshly in America post 9/11. Make no mistake, this is an all-star cast, with no American scenery chewing or faux sentiment. Vittorio Mezzogiorno is virtually unknown in the U.S. and that is a crime...watch this 20 times :)"

AMERICAN MOVIES WILL NEVER BE THIS GOOD

C. Scanlon | among us humans | 12/27/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I luckily discovered a copy of this excellent film in a discount bin in Mexico, with Spanish subtitles. The DVD compression is excellent and represents the full vision. The Spanish subtitles faithfully and fully follow the dialogue, which is poignant and profound and powerful.

We should be so lucky one day to produce a culture capable of producing a film such as this one, full of the parallax of multiple viewpoints of life, as full as James Joyce`s Ulysses or Kurasawa`s Roshamon in its multiple parallax, each viewpoint presented with its own validation and reality, across several generations. Especially moving are the recollections of the old man, and amazing flashbacks to his youth, and how the farm has fallen from wartime with its barnful of cattle to the present barnful of doves, as the sons have left and no one cares for the farm.

Amazing display of all classes of life in Italy of the time, from the judge to the terrorist brothers, with an intellectual dissection of each. It is a special joy to see Noiret as a younger man in his prime and free to perform without the restrictions of the British director of Il Postino later in his remarkable career.

This movie is one of those which build on you intensely, until the final image which rips your heart away and which feels like it comes way to soon. You want to see more, especially in sincere concern for the well being of the free-spirited grand-daughter. Or perhaps our post-Jocko generation unfailingly reads the wrong message into even a fully clothed adult sharing a bed with a child. Nevertheless, this movie permits a symbolic reading as well as the superficially visual. Notice the grand-daughter's early play with the pigeons, like the young Virgin MAry and the dove, her play unclothed in the dry corn in a garret above the bedroom where the grandmother lies in state, her spirit rising with the keening prayer to join the reborn girl above, her discovery of the egg, etc., her accompanying hand in hand of the grandfather, etc., and we see her take on the role of the grandmother, across the generations. Please watch this carefully and thoughtfully. Think it over. I realize our domestic films do not permit this kind of reflection anymore, but watch this again.

From the first moments you realize you are watching safely and securely a superior film which will not fail you on any level, which will fulfill any critical criteria and carry you away in its message and action. Do not fail to see it. It does withstand and reward repeated viewing.

I can show you the discount bin where I discovered it. Or here on the mighty amazon with unfortunately English subtitles for which I can give no comment nor guarantee as I have not seen them."