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Reviews
Miss Potter (2006)
Beatrix Potter, much admired as a writer and illustrator is little known as a person. In this film we can enter her world: a world that will entrance and delight.
I have been a fan of Beatrix Potter for years though I was not brought up on her books, discovering only later in life the delights of her drawings of animals and the Lake District countryside interwoven with the simple magic of her stories.
When I read that Renee Zellweger was to play Beatrix I was more than a little apprehensive: the thought of an American actor and a Texan at that playing such a quintessentially English role alarmed me. I must now concede: she is perfect for the role and plays Beatrix to near perfection.
There is an iron core to Beatrix that came through in her performance: a determination to make her own way and not to be molded either by the society she lived in nor her parents wishes for their daughter. She rejects her mother's choices of suitors and determinedly presses on with her carefully observed and exquisite art. In a move that could have become somewhat uncomfortable, her drawings sometimes come to life - an illustration of her relationship to them. It is realized perfectly: for a moment we enter her world and almost unconsciously suspend our disbelief. Beatrix world becomes as real to us as it was to her.
I am aware that there are some inconsistencies with the historical record (e.g. her relationship with William Heelis) but this does not detract from the film in any way. It is a deliberately understated film: there is no reliance on anything except the re-creation of a very special intimate world that Beatrix herself created for us to enter. This film succeeds superbly on this level and Beatrix heritage of her books and the large tracts of the Lake District which she gave to the nation are reflected in the painstaking production values of this film.
A word of warning: do not leave the theater until you listen to the song "When you taught me how to dance" delicately and sensitively sung by Katie Melua. It perfectly sums up the film and its delightful magic.
Films like this seldom win accolades but they enrich and inspire us and give us the perfect excuse to see a first-rate, uplifting movie.
Il cielo cade (2000)
A moving and thought-provoking wartime story.
A very moving story that is perfectly understated giving it a poignant and universal quality. The whole film is seen through the eyes of children who are caught up in events that they do not comprehend except that they affect them deeply. The children's acting is natural and unforced, at times full of the carefree pleasures of childhood but also able to reach considerable depth of feeling.
It is a film of positive values: love, family, tolerance played out against the brutality and pointlessness of a war that impacts ordinary people giving it a truly universal quality.
Joeren Krabbe gives a restrained performance of great dignity and humanity making the tragedy of his death so much the greater. Having done all to protect and safeguard his family, human inhumanity wantonly destroys though in the end the human spirit rises above the evil that lies beneath the surface.
I highly recommend the film: we need to remember too that similar stories are played out wherever there is war. This is a universal story.