I watched three films by Fatih Akin (Aztec Sun, On the Edge of Paradise and Shower Kitchen), I liked them, so when I came across his next film, Solino, I decided to watch it too. Despite the fact that Fatih Akin himself was born in Germany, nevertheless, being a Turk by birth, he constantly develops an immigrant theme, obviously, with this and there still not everything is so simple and good. In this film, the main characters are not Turks, but Italians, of whom there are also many in Germany. Once in the 60s, the father of the family Romano Amato (Gigi Savoie) moved his family - his wife Rosa (Antonella Attili) and two sons Giancarlo (adult he is played by Moritz Bleibtra) and Gigi (adult he is played by Barnaby Mechurat) from the small Italian town of Solino to Germany, in Duisburg, where he opensburg, a pizzeria, which he calls "Solino", where things are going very well at first. The sons somehow settle down, Romano himself is happy with the way he is doing things, but his wife Rosa can not really take root there. Relationships between family members cannot be called cloudless. The older brother from childhood is not distinguished by honesty and decency, while the younger and learns better, and human qualities have more worthy, often he has to puff out for what his brother is drawn into, which does not prevent him from remaining so slightly more naive, but also a better person, and the girls always treated him better, which caused envy and anger in the older brother. Over time, the brothers finally broke up with their father, who shamelessly used them, not wanting to pay them a normal salary for working in a pizzeria, and they leave home together. Over time, the wife leaves her husband, catching him with his mistress. Gigi always dreamed of making movies and slowly managed to shoot something - first photos, then an amateur film, which even gets to one local film festival and wins there. However, the mother falls ill with leukemia, she wants to return to Italy, Gigi takes her there, hoping to return soon, thinking that his brother will replace him. But everything does not turn out as he expected, and the brother manifests himself in all its glory, posing as him as the creator of the film, eventually Gigi finds out about it, comes to Germany for a while, and then returns back to Italy, where he eventually settles his life, starts a family and makes new films. And the brother, although he comes to his wedding, but it turns out that he is single, he has no one, he says that he works for TV and makes documentaries, but we do not know if this is true. The film, of course, is unwise, it is simply about people, about their relationships, about their human qualities. The actors play well, so I watched with interest.
The story follows the lives of two brothers who, as children, move with their family from their small town of Solino to Germany. At first experiencing difficulties, the parents of the boys soon open a cafe there, giving it the name of their hometown. Meanwhile, Gigi’s younger brother dreams of making a movie, but he is always getting in the way of something. Will he get what he wants?
A wonderful job has been done. The film raises a lot of important topics, such as envy, love carried through the years, the destruction of the family, the understanding of their mistakes, the fulfillment of desires.
Everyone liked the work, including the kids. I especially want to celebrate the brothers. And one of them, in turn, is the game of Moritz Bleibtroy. Just a wonderful actor, whose filmography I have already managed to selectively watch, without planning to stop there.
The town of Solino in southern Italy was gloomy on the day of the sixty-fourth year, when Romano and Rosa Amato decided to leave it for good, and together with their sons, Giancarlo and Gigi, boarded a train to Disburg. There was sadness and the girl Ada, which little Gigi promised to bring snow from Germany. But boys of all ages are so unfaithful - they easily forget their promises. And the girl never got the snow. And Solino kept looking at the Amato family through the eyes of photos from the walls of their new apartment, as if calling back. But with each passing year, this voice became quieter, and only Rosa, who never fully resigned to the parting, heard his call. She even named it the pizzeria, her third child, where Italian migrants came for the taste and aroma of home-cooked food. But how can an establishment in a gray building on the street of a similar gray city compare with a home that keeps memories of the happiest and saddest moments of her life? And is it possible to make real pasta of carbonar or pizza margarita from local products?
It's been ten years. The children grew up, and each of them found a place in this new life. Gigi became interested in filming and photography, and Giancarlo did not work anywhere, but could not imagine his life without Germany. Here they met and fell in love with a girl who almost broke the bonds of brotherly affection. Here, the head of the Amato family fulfilled his dream of his own business. And Solino kept calling Rosa in a quiet voice, almost indistinguishable from the German speech of her grown children and the chatter of her husband, who always flirts with the visitors of the pizzeria. Her town called for her to come back, promising to heal her wounds and regain her lost youth, and it became increasingly difficult for her to resist this call.
For Akin, who was born in Hamburg to Turkish immigrants but has not lost touch with Turkey, longing for his homeland is not an empty sound. It is rooted in his heart, flowed into the pages of his scripts, reflected in the scenes of his paintings. The more surprising is that it was in Solino, Akin’s only film that did not contain mention of Turkey and was shot according to someone else’s script, in the image of the main character – a boy from an Italian village – that the features of the director appeared most. After all, since childhood, he dreamed of making films and began his career with short films shot in the scenery of his native immigrant neighborhoods of Hamburg, and then won the audience prize at the international film festival with one of them. This movie became the main love of his life, the love that he so generously poured out on the screen in Solino.
Because Solino is a movie about love. About the love of brothers, about motherly love, about love for a woman and for native places, who see how you became, remember you for who you were. But above all, it is a film about love for the most important of the arts. With each frame, Akin sends his greetings to the great Italian directors: here the hero’s parents find out the relationship like Filumena Morturano and Domenico from Marriage in Italian. And in the next episode, the director recreates the absurdly beautiful tragic-comic, like Fellini, scene when a group of young people dressed in Nazi uniforms falls into a pizzeria, horrifying Rosa Amato, who sincerely believed that these are not actors in disguise, but Nazis who survived to the 60s. Scenes from the seventies suggest the creations of Bertolucci, and shooting in Italy in a manner close to the paintings of Tornatore. The creation of the Italian spirit is facilitated by music, then tearing the soul with a piercing waltz Canto di Solino performed by the Symphony Orchestra of Bulgaria, then setting Chelentanov’s “Il Tempo Se Ne Va” in a complacent manner.
And the whole film balances on the border of feelings, emotions and cultures, on which the director lives. Heroes easily pass from smooth Italian to sharp German, from brotherly love to rivalry for the heart of a girl, from despair to joy, from tears to laughter, and from quarrels to kisses. It’s like reminding you that life is beautiful in all its forms: the darkest night is before dawn, and the most joyful meeting is after a long separation. Therefore, with such relief, Giancarlo laughs through tears at his brother’s new short film, washing away the burden of sins of past years with tears of redemption and once again seeing beauty in the narrow streets of the provincial town in which he once spent his childhood.
9 out of 10
This is the third film by German Turk Fatih Akin I have seen. If the previous two “On the edge of paradise” and “the Sun of the Aztecs” struck a memory, “Solino” is not as hooked as I would like. This picture is somewhat reminiscent of the films of the famous Italian magician Giuseppe Tornatore. It seems that everything in it is on the case and the accents are placed correctly, but perhaps I just did not impress what I saw.
The story of one family, from which we can distinguish the story of two brothers. They moved from one country to another, from Italy to Germany in the sixties of the last century. Any move is always a hassle. And when you move to another country where there is only housing, but no job, where you do not know everything, it is more than serious and problematic. Add to this the fact that there is no special peace and harmony in the family. The father, the head of the family, is not mooing or calving, the brothers are not very friendly with each other. And against this background, the Dream is clearly visible. Yes, the dream that became the guiding star of one of the brothers. Of course, this brightens up the overall decline. Mother rolled up his sleeves, gave the idea to open a cafe, his father supported and seemingly life began to improve. At the same time, the dream has not disappeared. As a child, Gigi loved to look at the kaleidoscope. What to say when he saw a new camera in Germany? The desire to make films absorbed him completely, without a trace, seriously and not just for a long time, for life. It should be noted that people who met him on the way, such as a director or a store seller, this desire only intensified and transformed into a more serious form with quality content. And the life of the family boiled with all the ensuing difficulties and worries. There will be betrayal. Everything is as usual.
In the film there are very touching scenes, such as a girl from the past, giving either pies or cookies, now I do not remember for sure, the boy who liked it, the same brother who leaves his native penates. The ending of the film is also interesting. In short, a good movie for family viewing.
I didn't think he'd touch me like that. I watched it with subtitles, but sometimes I didn’t even need to read it, Italian is still like Romanian, and I understand German. But that's not the point. The fact is that the actors there play incomparable, the plot is very good, vital, everything is shown as it is, as it happens. After all, this is a film by Fatih Akin, it is characteristic of his films, his feature to start the film with some middle or final scene of the film is also present here, as in the film “On the Edge of Paradise”, or “Aztec Sun”. This film, as it seems to me, is about selfishness, about the selfishness of fathers and sons, about the fact that for the sake of your dreams you can go to anything that you need to stand your ground to the end, about what even the closest people can betray, about how hard and dreary it is to move to a completely different country, and mainly about love, about love for family, for home, for creativity, for a woman.
I don't know why I watched the first half yesterday with a lump in my throat and the second half with tears in my eyes. Maybe this is a difficult period for me now, or maybe this is the magic of Fatih Akin’s films.
Evaluation of course: