Three Brothers

One of Rosi’s best loved works, the elegiac, Oscar-nominated Three Brothers is both an intensely moving family chronicle and a richly textured treatment of political and social problems in contemporary Italy. Three very different brothers — an anti-terrorist judge, a militant factory worker, and an idealistic teacher — return to their childhood home in southern Italy for the funeral of their mother. Alienated from their roots and from each other, each begins to question his own life. In the meantime, their grieving father, a stranger to their urban anxieties, finds solace in his memories of the past and in the continuity with the future represented by his granddaughter. Combining the mellow lyricism of Olmi, the fantastical reminiscences of Fellini, and the apocalyptic nightmares of Ferreri, Three Brothers unfolds as a dense, poetic, deeply affecting weave of reality and fantasy, of past, present, and possible future. Rosi’s signature political/social concerns are present (class divisions, Italy’s north/south cultural split, the spectre of urban terrorism), but the director gives new prominence here to the emotions and psychology of his characters. “A great film . . . extraordinarily beautiful” (David Denby). “Rosi, who has one of the greatest compositional senses in the history of movies, keeps you in a state of emotional exaltation" (Pauline Kael). Colour, 35mm, in Italian with English subtitles. 111 mins.