Strong and Moving!

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Already in the beginning the viewers are told that this is the story of a linguist who wrote a book. The story starts, then, with a father, a shepherd, as he takes his little son out of the classroom to the mountains to help guard the area and the flocks of sheep. When other boys laugh, the father tells them their day will come too, and it does. In the poor Sardinia, the life of boys is that of men. If they rebel or fail, their fathers exercise violence against them. A Poor kid's comfort: the father promises Gavino that when he'd be 20, he'd be free to go to elementary school. Humor and something of a naive charm are sparkled along the film, but the roughness of this life comes through and through. Eventually, the time for elementary school arrives, and Gavino takes full advantage of it. Still, you stay in doubt if he will ever be really free from the spirit and the mentality of his father.

I saw this movie more than 20 years ago, but I have never forgotten it. There is no need for me to repeat what others have said about the plot. Let me just say that the film's use of natural sound is astounding. An illiterate boy is isolated from other people, so he develops a unique understanding of the world's noises. I appreciated the film's critique of paternalism, but even more, I was profoundly moved by the story of a peasant boy who manages to overcome his isolation and fear of his father and learn to read and then to study linguistics.I am going to buy a copy of this movie for my grandson who is studying film at a university. Despite the fact that he is a young and urban American, I think he will appreciate the humor, the innovative techniques and the themes of this remarkable film.

Seeing this film, reminded me of the typical situation of living outside the cities and in the fields.Gavino Ledda, lived a difficult life, which, the worst part, I think, was being isolated and with no contact from the outside of his sardinian life.I've seen that this movie is a polemic one towards being a good film or being a piece of trash, I'd go with the first one. I think that is a good film, making an adaptation of a book is always difficult, and the taviani brothers, did it succesfuly, ok, it is not a masterpiece either. but it's not a bad film, it applies the best it could to the low-budget they had. The Feat comes with the fact that it won the Palm D'Or in Cannes in 1977, and sometimes you might expect a piece of art, comparing it to the 'Tree of Wooden Clogs' that won the next Palm D'Or in 1978, Padre Padrone stands weak, but still I think it's a good movie, I own it, and sometimes watch again to take on some technichal details. If you have the chance see it, I can assure you that even if you don't like it, you won't consider it such a waste of time.

The life of an Italian peasant who was forced out of school by his father so as to be a shepherd in the remote country side. The loneliness and the father's brutality has an effect on the boy who grows up to be a late learner in reading and writing. This new knowledge he uses as a weapon against the everlasting battle with his tyrant father. The first half drags on but the second half all comes together.