Captain Corelli's Mandolin (2001)

Undescribable Perfection

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

hyped garbage

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

I have just returned from Kefalonia. That's the only reason for marking this movie with "3". I like the Island...I simply have no idea what's wrong with John Madden. On the paper, the guy seems to know what he's doing. Seems to be able to differ good from bad (if we take that there is no right and wrong). But after letting myself finish this movie (since I seem to be a masochist when it comes to finishing everything I am watching) I have got the impression that this fellow had been directing this in a complete emotional chaos because I can not believe that his fellow citizen Louis de Bernières had anything close to this idea. Love story?! Goddammit no! Let's start with the casting. Nicolas Cage?! Let's see, his character is a profligate Italian occupier fighting along with the Nazis under Mussolini and seducing a wive of an honest Greek patriot who goes to war to prevent his home Island being occupied...On the scale of charm from 1 to 10, that actor must have been something like 15 to even having any chance to make his character acceptably nice so one could even finish watching the movie! There were only two movies in the entire career of Nicolas Cage when he reached above 5 on such scale and where he has been able to transfer some kind of emotion through his character: Leaving Las Vegas and Face Off. However, considering that something above 5 is way below required 15, I have a feeling like I have been raped after watching this movie to the end.OK, I understand. The history of art deals with probably the greatest anguish of mankind - the unpredictable ways of love. But after she (Pelagia - Penelope) was able to deceive and leave her handsome, honest, simple-minded patriot Mandras played by Bale (probably the only one partially rising to the occasion along with Penelope here) for the (above described) Cage, I believe the only honest feeling one could actually gain would be to support the angry Kefalonian inhabitants by marking her with βρώμικο πουτάνα - sporca puttana (for the ones still liking the Italian lover :) No really, even John Waters' Pink Flamingos love does not seem so repulsive anymore.OK, I could be moving on with this, but I believe I have made my point clear enough.

I haven't read the book so I'm not anal about the movie digressing from the original plot. But it's still a horrible movie. If you want to make a schlocky love movie with Nicholas Cage affecting a risible Italian accent like out of some Little Cesar's Pizza commercial, be my guest. But please show some respect and don't base it on a real tragedy, the bloody German-Italian occupation of Greece in the Second World War and the 1943 massacre of 9000 Italian troops by the Germans.To be fair to the movie, Penelope Cruz does her usual excellent job of playing an attractive girl who painfully holds out against her romantic feelings before eventually giving in to love. The only problem is that I've seen her in this role before. Other than that, the movie is 1950ies-type of inane. The Greeks are proud archetypes (but hey, daddy's still all for emancipation and that), the Italians are jolly opera boffins, and the Germans uptight, evil maniacs. Beautiful, proud Pelagia is betrothed to a resistance fighter but has the hots for a jaunty Italian soldier. You connect the dots. That's really all there is to it.The sad thing is that the entire plot's long been done before, a million times better, and with infinitely more charme, in the 1991 Italian movie Mediterraneo. If you like the general idea of a romantic comedy about Italians occupying a Greek island, and going native in the process, you've struck gold. Captain Corelli's Mondolin, on the other hand, is trite sh*te.

"Kefalonia,Greece,1940".We know that because it's just been on the screen.In case we think it's Kefalonia,Mississippi,presumably.Then to make sure we are on message a Greek dance starts up.To allay any lingering doubts,another ten minutes into screen time and there's another Greek dance.OK,thank you,we got it the first time. Unfortunately all this desire to impose ethnicity is thwarted by the appearance of the very English Mr John Hurt as the wise doctor/philosopher Iannis and the very Spanish Miss Penelope Cruz as his daughter Pelagia. Mr Hurt has a grey walrus moustache and disconcertingly black hair. He doesn't speak so much as spout wise doctor/philosopher stuff so you just know he is really really wise and really really loves his daughter in a wise fatherly way.She becomes engaged to Mandras a simple fisherman after he throws her into the sea.Then war comes and her simple fisherman goes off to fight the Hun.Irrepressible child of nature that she is,Pelagia skips gaily along the footpaths surrounding her village.The island is invaded by the Italian army with only one thing on their minds singing extracts from Puccini and playing various stringed instruments. Well there is one other thing on their minds as exemplified by that dratted handsome Capt Corelli when we first see him looking in his dress uniform as if he would be happier piloting Thunderbird 3.On spotting Pelagia in the crowd as they march through town to accept the surrrender he orders his men to salute "Bella bambina at 2 'o clock" thus identifying himself as a dog and a sexist at once.A stereotypical Italian then. Mr Nicholas Cage plays Capt Corelli in a way that clearly pleases him. He and child of nature fall in love which Miss Cruz valiantly tries to depict,her brow furrowing with effort from time to time.Wise doctor/philosopher Iannis thinks no good will come of it.The Italians surrender as soon as is decently possible leaving the dour humourless Germans to fight alone with entirely foreseeable results. Not to be confused in any way with the well - received novel of the same title,"Captain Corelli's Mandolin" sets cliché upon cliché and devil take the hindmost.It tries for the sweep of a David Lean but lacks the absolute control of his subject that categorised his work. Should American viewers wonder why Europe is still so bedevilled a continent then they can rest assured that the Greeks still hate the Germans,the Germans hate the Italians and the English hate everybody. Peace - to Europeans - is merely a continuation of war by other means.

When I first saw the trailer for this movie, I was under the impression that Nicolas Cage's character was an American soldier, and that Penelope Cruz was the Italian. This was thought because of Cage's horrific attempt at an Italian accent with the line "Bella bambina at 12 o'clock" (or something like that). I assumed he was trying to fake an accent to be silly as he was marching around what I thought was Italy. The accents were horrible, and as always, Penelope Cruz sounds like a squeaky chihuahua trying to squeeze out her lines. And lets not forget about Christian Bales accent, wow, sounded like he was trying to speak through a ball of cotton stuffed in his mouth. And if the accents weren't bad enough, during the love scene between Cage and Cruz, you get a glimpse of pit hair from not Cage, but Cruz! Maybe that was the norm for women in Greece back then, but that's not what just doesn't fly in a love scene these days. Put this DVD back on the shelf at the video store and walk right past, you can't get the wasted 2 hours of your life back.