Review of St. Michael Had a Rooster

for those hard-core taviani brothers fans, this is a treat. Slow going and with little action, the story recounts the attempts of an anarchist to start a revolutionary movement in rural italy in the late '800s. His attempts fail and is incarcerated for a decade in isolation. Cut off from human contact, in order to keep his mental sanity, he stages simulated political meetings in his cell, and fastasizes gourmet meals while eating prison food. At the end of the movie, in a rare outing, he exchanges words with a younger and newer generation of political prisoners, but instead of finding common ground, realizes that his ideology has been ignored by the generations that followed. A slow movie, like all Taviani films, but very symbolic. A rare "political" movie, that US audiences might have trouble following without knowing much about the political movements that existed in Europe in the 800s. Slightly similar in concept to "Cristo Si E' Fermato a Eboli", the latter being more pleasant with its travelogue mix of Southern Italy.