Baaria

Baarìa (2009) is Giuseppe Tornatore's film about the town he was born in, made twenty years after Cinema Paradiso. Baarìa is the local name for Bagheria in Sicily. Tornatore was born there. The film follows three generations of one family from the 1930s to the present: the fascist years, the war, membership of the Communist Party, the mafia, fights over land, and the slow transformation of the town. Tornatore had the set built in Tunisia. The Bagheria of the 1930s no longer existed, so they constructed the town from nothing. It became one of the most expensive Italian productions of its period. The score is again by Ennio Morricone, one of the late works of his long partnership with Tornatore. The film's problem comes from its ambition. Compressing eighty years into two and a half hours leaves no time with anyone. The scenes are beautiful, the transitions are fast, and it moves on before any attachment forms. Taken scene by scene, though, what Tornatore wanted is perfectly clear: to record the memory of a town. It runs 160 minutes. Good for: Italian cinema, period drama, and anyone who loves Cinema Paradiso. Less good for: it is long, crowded and diffuse, and it contains violence and political conflict.