Too much of everything

To me, this movie is perfection.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

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.

Watching Antonia's Line 20 years after it was made (and winning Best Oscar Foreign Film then), it still has its quirky 'life-is-full-of-the-unexpected' charm reminiscent of 'new wave' movies of the 90s, though it does feel dated now. It's about lore, life, love/lovelessness, and definitely not about logic. So if you go about looking for typical character motivation, plot sensibility or any form of social, religious or political allegory, then you're looking for these typical "movie subtext" in the wrong garden. It is laughable how so many read 'feminism' into the movie. There is none of it, unless you go about creating one on your own. Both male and female characters can be interpreted as "strong" or "weak" depending on how you choose to view them based on your own bias - the movie as it is, has no bias whatsoever. For example, is resisting marriage a 'strong' or 'weak' trait? Depends on your own experiences, opinions, and views, isn't it. Or, to bay at the full moon because you can't marry your Protestant lover - is that 'weakness', 'foolishness', 'madness' or 'strong love'? Or to drown your own kin (who has committed a heinous rape) when he is already beaten and weak by pushing his head into the water from the back without his ability to defend himself - is that 'righteous', 'weak', 'strong', 'anarchic', 'cowardly', brave' or what?The movie presents what it presents. If you choose to draw any conclusion from it, then know it comes entirely from you, and don't merit your own intentions to that of the movie's intention.Watch it with open eyes and just let it rinse into you, and wash out whatever washes out.

The 1995 winner of Best Foreign Language Film tells the story of a woman, her daughter and granddaughter over several years in the Netherlands. The women do everything to show their strength. One of the best parts is what happens after a hypocrite makes fun of the granddaughter; I would hate to be in his place! Overall, "Antonia" (called "Antonia's Line" in English) is definitely one that I recommend. This and "The Assault" are Holland's two supreme masterpieces. In other words, ik reken erop (Dutch for "I count on it") because it is truly iets zoets (Dutch for "something sweet"). A veritable part of De Geschiedenis Des Nederlandsen Films (history of Dutch cinema).

Antonia's Line…..(the only important, inspiring math-movie) Here is a stark contrast in movies about the subject and culture theory of mathematics in a modern biographical/educational setting. It's a foreign film, Dutch, and it provides a contemporary alternate point of reference for the many examples of mathematics involved cinema in American film. And what it tells Americans about their society, it's institutions of film and government, how they are seasoned with psychological, anti-intellectual propaganda is fascinating. Those conditions have their pronounced features for different historical reasons, geography, culture drift and the unique roll of the U.S. since WWII and of course the synergy between mathematics, war technology and the evolution of the Cold War to permanent information war. Part of that war you see has opened up a front specifically treating mathematics whereas it had long since considered the public and public education critical targets for softening and fluorochemical bombardment directly linked to today's epidemic mental retardation anomaly--The war not only against information, but the war against mind; and the staple brand manufacturing of the U.S. public educator as motion picture laughing stock in a devil may care, entertainment commercialized riot zone on what the electorate is supposed to keep throwing away its taxes and the students their disposable income, trend adoption, affected attitude, style, mannerisms and other grievously wasteful contaminations.The movie sets its own pace, follows the development of a little girl and her close-knit communal ties. Indeed it would appear that in the structuring of the mathematician here it does 'take a village'. And she turns out to become a remarkably gifted algebraist/group theorist of some kind. We could parallel this film through a procedure often employed in mathematics, what's called an Extension to another European movie "Mindwalk", where we could imagine catching up to her after her career had gone through a government military closure working on SDI in physics. This is the woman the politician's friend takes him to see on Mt. San Michelle; and by this procedure of comparing biographical cinema in the sciences better appreciate its span and gender specification through the traditional underdog in the stereotypically male dominated arenas of math and science.For one thing, the main character isn't portrayed as crazy or mentally ill; if that's important in establishing the sharp contrast repetitively marring American genre in this same category. So the film is a great relief from the mental cruelty heaped on intellectual aspirations in a perennially bullied and sinking American educational decline, promoted through the mass industry of Hollywood film propagandas marketed as so called 'entertainment'. 'Buyer beware.' Not to bother comparing it with the far inferior movie 'Proof', even in the biographical abundance that would have been available to structure a film about John Nash, "A Beautiful Mind", a wide ranging set of life experiences also caught up in Europe for an extended time, instead a hack biographer is selected to play up the crazy smear in order a distortion in film can be manufactured from that template. Chalkboard scenes are important litmus for calibrating the realism or contrivance, in Antonia's Line you have a far more natural setting, in the Nash film something completely different, i.e. yet another instance of 'throwing away the textbook', similar to the classroom setting in 'Dead Poets Society', and a storming of the lecture by an overzealous psychiatrist's Gestapo when Nash lectures on The Riemann Hypothesis. Induce, then blame the victim—the usual knuckle-dragging monkeyshine's half-truths and characteristically feckless White lies. The American audience is dismissed as childish enough to have those sorts of overt propaganda coercions foisted on them without comment or feedback, what are really unqualified abuses of portrayal, demeaning to education and educators and really amount to nothing more than the usual crass bullying of another intellectual that has come to supplant better film and literature development in this country domineered instead by 'Animal House' and high school movies trying to reduce our establishment to zoos and mockeries in terms of international standards. Through this filter of film culture-study a picture of the Cold War victor begins to take on a caste of embedded contradictions…not so much the friendly film skies and greatest country in history…as it is in fact a continuation of the social war of the 1960s, a jingoistic sniping at the public from hidden bunkers and assassin boy scout camps of no account, now more contained in how the news media selectively manages the gathering dirty secrets as they pile up, cumulate in unexplained pandemic disease prevalence or just happen to come crashing down in tons of steel and debris for no official, discernible reason. If, upon weighing the available fare, interpreting and selecting from the alternatives this review stimulates a greater interest to seek out foreign film equivalents rather than continue to be bludgeoned by the bad parent of Hollywood imitations, hopefully the better informed consumer choice will result in a healthier film-going experience avoiding such obstacles to unhindered aspirations.

movies where you're just waiting for something to happen. WEll in this case waiting for something natural, spontaneous to happen.I t never does. Antonia's line is horribly contrived with so much narration it doesn't allow you to think...there's no foreshadowing, connected plot, growing relationships...it's just a movie where stuff happens.All the characters are flat and boring, from the beginning apparently we should have seen this coming ( as they killed off the Mother who seemed to have some issues in about 5 minutes.)There's no feeling and comedy? Comedy? How the hell is this a comedy? I didn't laugh once.There was more character development in Seasame Street than Antonia's. And yes like everyone is saying... the movie is quite anti-male or rather treat men like disposable diapers. Kill 'em, do 'em and don't let them know they have a kid.The first 15 minutes ARE really the way the whole movie is.