I was expecting to love paisan as much as I loved Rome, open city, but it is worse in almost every way.
Paisan feels like a way to present a tonne of themes in a short period of time to make a statement rather than tell a good story. Roberto Rossellini's film Rome, open city came out one year before this one, has just as much to say, tells a good story and is technically stellar.
I don't disagree with any of the themes presented in paisan but I don't think they are presented well, they are presented through very on the nose dialogue, almost every time the theme is explored it is through a character just rambling about it for a couple of minutes. I also don't think a film can just rely on having lots of important themes, all of my favourite film explore themes, but they are presented more subtly, these films also have more about them than just the themes.
Paisan is technically so much worse than Rome, open city. I praised open city for having such good ADR for the time, the ADR is paisan is awful, some of the time the characters don't even move their mouths and they are talking, it feels like nobody cared enough to actually talk on set. It's not a technically bad movie though, the cinematography is brilliant and it captures the epic scale of the film very well and the editing is a big improvement from Rossellini's previous film.
My main issues with paisan are the writing and the characters. Like I mentioned earlier the dialogue is very on the nose, along with this it is often very boring to listen to. This is because the characters don't get given any development really, very little time is spent on one group of people so I didn't attach myself to anyone and ended up not caring what happened to anyone.
This is not a bad film by any means but it did not live up to my expectations, I was left feeling disappointed. Fingers crossed Germany year zero is better.
Paisan feels like a way to present a tonne of themes in a short period of time to make a statement rather than tell a good story. Roberto Rossellini's film Rome, open city came out one year before this one, has just as much to say, tells a good story and is technically stellar.
I don't disagree with any of the themes presented in paisan but I don't think they are presented well, they are presented through very on the nose dialogue, almost every time the theme is explored it is through a character just rambling about it for a couple of minutes. I also don't think a film can just rely on having lots of important themes, all of my favourite film explore themes, but they are presented more subtly, these films also have more about them than just the themes.
Paisan is technically so much worse than Rome, open city. I praised open city for having such good ADR for the time, the ADR is paisan is awful, some of the time the characters don't even move their mouths and they are talking, it feels like nobody cared enough to actually talk on set. It's not a technically bad movie though, the cinematography is brilliant and it captures the epic scale of the film very well and the editing is a big improvement from Rossellini's previous film.
My main issues with paisan are the writing and the characters. Like I mentioned earlier the dialogue is very on the nose, along with this it is often very boring to listen to. This is because the characters don't get given any development really, very little time is spent on one group of people so I didn't attach myself to anyone and ended up not caring what happened to anyone.
This is not a bad film by any means but it did not live up to my expectations, I was left feeling disappointed. Fingers crossed Germany year zero is better.