A romantic fable almost stretched to breaking point.... (Captain Corelli's Mandolin (DVD))

Member Name: redcockney

Product:	Captain Corelli's Mandolin (DVD)
Date:	21/08/01 (58 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: If you can eschew the saturation of picture-postcard imagery, you may very well like it.

Disadvantages: Not for the cynical or realists among you.

No doubt about it, it’s a romanticised view of war where tragedies happen conveniently whenever passion is in the air and people join the army just because it seemed like the right thing to do.

The setting as from the book is Cephalonia.and the dreamy golds of the island to the blues of the Ionian Sea are fully realised for the viewer to see. The same cannot unfortunately be said of the story OR the acting.

Set in 1940, ‘Corelli’ focuses in on various events on Cephalonia to the arrival of the ‘occupation’ of the Italians offset by an occasional narrative from Dr. Iannis (John Hurt). Primarily, it is a love
triangle punctured by unfortunate circumstances.

Pelegia (Penelope Cruz), a Greek girl falls in love with a local fisherman Mandras (Christian Bale).

Unfortunately for them, war echoes around the corner and he leaves to join the Greek army to fight against Mussolini’s army in Albania. They make a pact that they’ll marry after the war and she sends him love letters to where he is....it just happens that Mandras is illiterate.

Pelegia’s father, Dr. Iannis disapproves and wants her to marry a foreigner exclaiming that Greek men expect to be dominant in a marriage and that Mandras is not her equal.

Soon, a small brigade of Italian soldiers headed by a Captain Corelli make their way onto Cephalonia.

When they command the mayor to surrender, he refuses eventually requiring a German officer to accept on his behalf. The Italians celebrate by singing opera and dancing with the local women.

Corelli however notices Pelegia and soon they fall in love despite their initial reluctance and their backgrounds.

The Greeks eventually defeat the Italians BUT Greece is divided between the control of Germany and Italy. Mandras come back to discover the Italians have taken over the island. The Germans though have different ideas....

It’s n
ot hard to see why, anyone WON’T like the movie which is much to do with it’s lush locations and seashore antics as it does the characters (Greek fisherman with bare chests? Hmmm...).

Love at first sight is a tricky thing to establish and make genuine. It happens just so and as to the ‘hows’, ‘whys’ and ‘becauses’ there aren’t many if any and seemed destined (or if you like, dictated) by
the screenplay.

Nicholas Cage gives a passionate performance as the eponymous Captain Antonio Corelli BUT the most grating thing is though he is of Italian descent, Cage’s Italian accent is dreadful to the point of embarrassment. In the first act, he is full of ebullient energy giving us an air of what he would be like BUT in the more dramatic second act, he returns to his familiar pragmatic and hangdog ways which is frustrating.

Although rising to the rank of captain, he’s homesick and really can’t stand war. He loves to sing opera as does the rest of his battalion. And he plays a mean mandolin (along with a ditty he especially wrote
for Pelegia which is enough to win her over).

Penelope Cruz for all her worth is great when acting in her native tongue of Spanish BUT I seldom seem the allure of her as foisted upon us by the media. There’s something about Penelope that doesn’t ring
true as Pelegia NOT just because of the mis-match of her playing a Greek girl through acceptance rather than passion. Her role in the film appears merely to be a decorative bauble rather than anything substantial.

A problem is that there are other characters that are far more appealing than this pairing such as Christian Bale who seems the most comfortable when forced into acting with an accent and comes across as the most genuine. Although the character’s prominence in the book has reduced the role to mere supporting (as has the more unappealing parts of the c
haracter).

It’s such a shame that ‘Corelli’ couldn’t be more melodramatic rather than play up it’s romantic aspects which unfortunately fall flat (although it is perhaps one of the few reasons why people will genuinely seek out the film....).

Another is that many of the more unsettling aspects of the book are simply ignored. A sequence early in the film of Corelli detonating an old WW1 explosive is more carefully put together than either the war
scenes or the hurried scenes after the earthquake happens. Surprisingly, it does have it’s fair share of nudity and violence.

In the end, it seemed a cynical and expensive attempt to garner awards trying to resemble a curious cross between ‘Life Is Beautiful’ and ‘The English Patient’. Even just shy of two hours, it should have been slightly longer to try to develop more substantial character.

It would have also worked much better with a less stellar cast as well as if it had been multi-lingual with the German, Greek and Italian sentiments not so muddied. What we get is reinactions from “Allo, Allo” as we have one character not being able to understand another’s strangled English which means having another translate it for them in another accent.

Some of the effort can be seen BUT it has a misplaced heart. And that is simply unforgivable.

Summary: