Konterr Brilliant and touching

SpunkySelfTwitter It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

Myron Clemons A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

Roy Hart If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

Filipe Neto I watched this movie a few days ago for the first time, with my mother. I wasn't sure what to expect because I hadn't watched the trailer or read about the movie before. In fact, I haven't even read Isabel Allende's book. What caught my attention and made me watch it was the participation of Jeremy Irons and Meryl Streep, two artists that I love to see working. And what a surprise when I started talking "I've been there!" or "I know that place" while watching some scenes! To my pride, this movie was almost totally shot in Portugal. I am so used to seeing other countries in foreign films that I always feel joy and pride when I recognize my own country. And Portugal is such a beautiful country, with so much to show and so much potential that I am surprised to be so little visited by the foreign filmmakers. Maybe this will change gradually, now that John Malkovich, Madonna and Monica Belluci are living here with us...The story of this film is interesting and appealing: spanning three generations of the same family, it focuses on Clara, a woman with a psychic gift to predict the future and the dead, and her marriage with Esteban, a wealthy farmer who made his fortune with much effort. But the main plot is about the forbidden love story between their daughter, the idealist Blanca, and Pedro Segundo, a poor young man who, moreover, is a communist. The hostile relation between Pedro and Esteban allows the film to show the political evolution of Chile during the twentieth century, from an oligarchic and conservative republic to a military dictatorship.All these things are good but this story has some problems as well, which may (or may not) have origin in Allende's book. To begin with, I didn't like to see Clara's powers so poorly used. It's a subject with no real importance for the course of the story, and I was expecting more here. Another major problem is the simplistic way that political issues are handled. Everything is black and white, no gray areas. Communists are the good guys, fighting for freedom and people's rights, and conservatives are the bad guys, who are greedy, corrupt and oppressive. This is wrong, probably untrue and smells like leftist propaganda. In politics, things are never so simple as that. I believe, at least at this point, that the problem may be in Allende's text, for she is deeply communist and has never forgotten the brutal way her father was murdered, but even this doesn't justify the highly biased way the film deals with political subjects.Concerning the actors, I am very happy. Meryl Streep did very well, with a contained and timid performance as required by her character. However, she was damaged by the way the script deals with psychic powers of her character. Winona Ryder was beautiful, giving strength and personality to her character. However, sometimes she seems naive and, as we don't realize the beginning of her love story, it seems untrue and far-fetched sometimes. Antonio Banderas was fine but this wasn't the right movie for him to shine. His character is a hook for the biased political portrait I mentioned and to create a love story that makes everything else more digestible. Glenn Close was more unlucky, however. I never understood the purpose of her character, whose permanence on screen is brief and doesn't bring many changes to the plot. Jeremy Irons dominates the film. He was excellent, toasting the audience with an exceptional work, worthy of an Oscar. In fact, with so many stars, it's surprising how the film went unnoticed.Technically, the film also seems irreproachable. Good cinematography and an excellent soundtrack, which remained in the ear for some time after the movie ended. Of course, I really loved the choice of shooting locations, and I found it funny to see the Portuguese Army participating in the film although I wonder who paid for them, after all they are not paid to do figuration and would be very serious if that money came out of the taxpayer's pocket.This is a very good film, with a star-cast working hard to please us, beautiful sets and costumes and an appealing love story. In general, it will surely worth our attention.

CalvinValjean The first time I saw THE HOUSE OF THE SPIRITS, I had a similar reaction to what most critics seemed to have. I felt the movie was bad, but couldn't say why exactly. It's hard to find fault in a movie with such an esteemed cast, such great sets and cinematography, etc. I knew it was based on a famous novel, so I figured the problem must have been in the adaptation.Upon reading the novel and then going back to the film, I realized something interesting: the film starts out as a faithful adaptation before losing its way, but the biggest issue is the tone.The novel's style of magical realism is, right from the start, difficult to adapt to film. There's green hair, there's magic remedies, and there's a very darkly humorous tone. The film on the other hand is very bleak and brooding, with only some slight supernatural element, which is kind of shrugged off. Roger Ebert, who always has a perfect way of articulating the best criticism, worded it best: "Magic realism, which informs so many South American stories, is treated here as a slightly embarrassing social gaffe, like ing wind. Clara's gifts are not made integral to the story; the filmmakers see them more as ornamentation." For example, in the book, Severo and Nivea die in a car accident and Clara keeps her mother's decapitated head in the basement. Years later, when Clara dies, Esteban tells his servants "Well, we might as well bury my mother-in-law's head now." Moments like that are missing, and instead we just have a scene of Severo and Nivea in a random car accident in the film, and are then never mentioned again. Why even bother having the car accident at all? And why waste Vanessa Redgrave in such a small role? Now this leads into another issue: the most infamous criticism of this film is that it stars a bunch of "gringos" (Jeremy Irons, Meryl Streep, Glenn Close, and Winona Ryder) as Chilean characters. At first glance, you might think this is a shallow thing to criticize: actors play characters of different ethnic backgrounds all the time, nor is there any one way that a Chilean person should "look." But I think this criticism is actually a misdiagnosis of a bigger problem. The problem isn't that these actors are all Anglo; it's the fact that they play their characters in a very Anglicized way for an Anglo audience. They mispronounce names like Tres Marias ("Trays Muh-ree-ahs") and Esteban ("Estuh-baan") and say them all as if these names are foreign to them. Irons, who is British, sounds American while Close, who is American, sounds British. Winona Ryder's character is presented as an all-American girl. There's even a scene towards the end, while Blanca is being tortured and Alba waits for her at home, where Alba is eating out a Kentucky Fried Chicken box in the 1970's! (KFC didn't start opening stores in Chile until 1992. Yes, I actually looked it up out of curiosity). Now you might say "Who cares if they show a KFC box? That's nitpicking." It might not seem important, but on a subtextual level, it's significant. The filmmakers are trying to dilute the Hispanism of the story and create the mindset that this could easily be happening in the US. All of this adds a feeling of displacement to the movie. Because it loses its Chilean and Latino identity, the politics lose their context. What is the coup at the end all about? Why does it happen? What happened to the workers at Tres Marias? Why was Pedro III an enemy of the military's?When you take this story, remove its Hispanic context and magic realism, what you're left with is just a domestic drama, which is less interesting than its book counterpart when it is simplified. The adaptation's biggest change is the removal of an entire generation and combining Blanca and Alba into one character. This completely changes the third act and it now makes no sense for Esteban to help Pedro III escape. In the book, Esteban s forces with Miguel as they both care about saving Alba. In the film's version, ing forces with Pedro III will in no way have any affect on saving Blanca. The impact of Esteban's relationship with Alba is also lost as she is reduced to only a small child in the film and not given much character. In the book, Esteban has affairs with multiple women at Tres Marias and fathers many children, which everyone is aware of. In the film, he just randomly commits violent rape one day in a very abrupt scene, and then completely forgets about it until a son shows up one day. Because of the removal of an entire generation, Esteban III in the book is Esteban II in the film, and his character is given the Hollywood archetypes of a perverse and disturbed villain rather than as the symbol of lineage of violence he was in the book. In addition to this you have the removal of Blanca's brothers from the book and a climax that doesn't play very dramatically, and the resulting story is very fractured and loses the epic 3-generation sweep of the novel.I am left wondering if any film could have been made of this book, which has so many characters and spans many different episodes. Regardless, this film, and its serious tone, do not suit the book at all, and just leaves audiences wondering what the story they just saw was all about.

filmalamosa First this movie is a biased interpretation of the history of Chile (based on a book by Isadora Allende---yes related to the communist president who was assassinated).The Allende government like all far left governments quickly shut down the productive economy impoverishing everyone in the process (it had nothing to do with a plot by United Fruit or the evil market economies as suggested in the movie).The movie---I am finally getting there--is lavishly filmed and entertaining I got some amusement by seeing the bad guys win. The novel has some more entertaining subplots like the one involving the "aristocratic" Frenchman who marries the daughter in the book.Look all in all it is entertaining has wonderful actors and if you love Chile you will enjoy it--just ignore the pounding political correctness.

joshsimona well, i said it all in the summary, i simpley adore the movie and the cast...i would give each actor an Oscar...great, great movie...i'm 25 now and i watched it 4 times in different periods and i always think i won't cry and i always do, about 2 or 3 times...;) meryl s. was absolutely brilliant, jeremy irons also..just brilliant...i wish the movie received more awards... i really don't know anybody who watched it and didn't loved it... also, glenn close was fantastic... the story was beautiful and sad at the same time... i loved the fact that despite everything clara and esteban loved each other so much, and how blanca was close to her parents...