Post by ronnierocketago on Mar 24, 2009 18:26:47 GMT
FRANCESCO (1989) - **1/2
(NOTE: Because I figure it would be in bad taste, I'll try to refrain from my usual profanity spasms. Try)
I'll be honest, I only watched this both on the recommendation of my Film Cinema Movie forums colleague ArkadyRenko, and because of its audaciously insane casting. Remember that 1990s cartoon THE CRITIC, which used to make gags about outlandish (very unlikely) movies with random ironic castings at times for the punchline? Well they had written a gag about Mickey Rourke playing St. Francis of Assisi, I would have laughed. But FRANCESCO did this for real, and I'm surprised to say that despite sounding ludicrous, there is an actual logic to it all and it kinda works.
Think about the St. Francis legend. After the son of a wealthy merchant in 13th century Italy decided to adopt the Gospel lifestyle literally by selling all of his wordly possessions (including the clothes off his back) and become impoverished, why were so many of his fellow youth noblemen and aristocrats stirred to likewise do the same and follow his path? OK maybe they felt purity in his simple, noble cause of helping tend to the poor and hungry while tending to a small stone shack church built in the middle of nowhere, and not accepting anything for personal gains, but surely was there more to it than an appealing alternative Christianist lifestyle answer within the backyard of the decadent wealthy Christiandom political centre of Rome?
Director Liliana Cavani's answer is that "Francesco" was a charismatic man of leadership with a clear vision, and no bullshit, not willing to compromise one bit for what he believed his Lord and Savior demanded. I mean this is a guy when some new (rich) recruits show off their new house that a local city had donated to the cause, he gets up on the roof and starts tearing it apart brick by brick. It's an action that's both inspiringly insane, and a good motivational stunt for his dedicated brothers. In his prime in the 1980s as I detailed in my YEAR OF THE DRAGON review, Rourke was a very physically magnetic presence, with those wet eyes and also don't forget that St. Francis in his pre-religious days was a playboy and a dick to beggers and lepers, and Rourke in his stardom days certainly was a guy known for his lack of humility.
I must admit that the American Rourke in Middle-Age Italian clothing was jarring at first (like Charlton Heston as Michaelangelo THE AGONY AND THE DESTINY all those years ago), but after awhile you get used to it and even accept him. But he really he hits a homerun with his scene at the Assissi church, where to calm down the rioting pews after a failed sermon, he grabs the wooden cross off the wall, plants it in front of them, and captivates the crowd in saying: "It's easy to worship wooden images. They never suffer from hunger or the cold." Now that's good leadership speak right there, and yeah I can see why Francesco's buddies would follow him into the ends of the Earth, even to Detroit.
Yet I think FRANCESCO the film disservices that power moment and Rourke's nice acting. Released in the same year as THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST, Cavani tries like that Martin Scorsese classic to paint of sorts a frank realist portrait of a Saint that certainly was never totally virtuous or ever free of temptation, keeping all the urges of man to sin that damned him in the first place, and not giving in to them. But if FRANCESCO has alot of nice notions and ideas, unlike CHRIST it just lacks the filmatics to pull them off. It's kinda CHRIST' little dumb brother: well-meaning is the best term you can give it credit for.
I think my first problem with FRANCESCO was, to use comic book speak, the origin story. Why does a well-off hotny manwhore, a true fratboy of his time, become well a Saint greatly admired throughout the centuries and around the world, even by atheists and secularists to this day? You won't find the answer here. I guess Cavani thought the better question wasn't "Why" but "Why Not?" by contantly showing all the homeless beggers and malnourished children running around, but that thematic approach begs a new question: Why didn't he just donate some coins, feel better about himself, and then ignore them again like most people do? Yeah ok he finds and reads a vernacular bootleg translation of a Gospel that got a guy executed. Today prisoners smuggle in drugs and porn, back then it was a Bible. There wasn't enough to convince me.
I mean this will sound sacrilege, but I will argue that some of the more spiritually moving cinema experiences we've gotten in the last few years came not from evangelical condescending follow-the-lord-and-he'll-save-you tripe like FIREPROOF and LEFT BEHIND or Catholic torture porn like THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST, but from a few superhero movies. Spider-Man's uncle dies because of his arrogance, and never escapes that guilt. Batman lost his innocence, and tries to make good and maintain his purity by not breaking his one rule, though he's nearly tempted numerous times out of fustration or necessity. Iron Man was a proud WMD aritsan, ashamed of his life's work, creates new weapon to disarm the world. Superman being goofball with his mortal Godhood is humbled by his adoptive father's death from a heart attack that which he could do nothing about (ok that one was from the 1970s, but you get my drift.)
Either way, you understand why they all are transformed from normal insignificant person to ubermensch on both an emotional state, and in surprisingly theological terms their very destiny both frees, and limits, them. So yes I'll sound pretentious geekism here, but I was more involved by Christopher Nolan's BATMAN BEGINS (where one might care more about Bruce Wayne than Batman) than I ever was with those other "Christian" movies and FRANCESCO, with the exception of one. Scorsese's CHRIST tried to do that approach with Jesus Christ, and well you all probably know how the faith responded to it with vile hatred before they even bothered to watch it. Yet who knows how many stayed, or came back to, the faith because of CHRIST re-examining the Western World's greatest story?
Sorry about that rant, but I'm just saying that even if I'm not exactly religious on an everyday basis, I'm for a good religious story, but I wasn't moved or interested or intrigued by Rourke's baptism into his new mission, until that church cross scene. There I finally get a glimpse of interest in FRANCESCO, but unlike Scorsese's CHRIST, Cavani decided her Francis would be an indeicpherable creature, but I wonder if that undercuts the would-be psychological and philosophical examination that she wants to do with him. Scorsese in CHRIST (with scriptwriter Paul Schrader adapting Nikos Kazantakis' book) allowed us to follow Willem Dafoe's thoughts and feelings, a nuanced fleshed out personal approach to iconography, which Rourke is ultimately in FRANCESCO. Of course I might be missing the point here, I don't know.
A good scene where she is successful though was when Rourke is climbing mountains covered in snow, and confronts a family on the way. He then strips naked and dives into the snow, and balls up snow up to his genitals. We then cut to him finishing up his two snowmen, a big and small one, which he calls wife and son. Not exactly subtle, but I liked that symbolism that he basically fucks the snow because he's been celibate for years and needed to get laid, and also that he conceives his "child" that he will never experience for real. Why couldn't FRANCESCO be more like this, where imagery actually makes a point or yet another mythological step instead of almost forever relying on composer Vangelis' (BLADE RUNNER) dramatic-pounding good music to be dramatic.?
Of course a problem is that apparently the American cut of FRANCESCO got chopped down by over 30 minutes, so you get a very awkward editing narrative this side of Michael Mann's THE KEEP, where it's too obvious that alot of stuff was axed, and thus things happen on-screen and you don't know why exactly, but you just try to guess. Take the sequence when Rourke and his pal go to see the Pope, only to find that he died. They enter the tomb chamber with ease and no guards on the site, find the corpse on the floor, pick it up and put it back on its memorial slab. Now why was there no security? Was the body forgotten or dropped? I mean considering the Vatican's great history of having Popes dig up previous pontiffs and place their rotting cadavers on trial and "execute" them, I would think the Holy See would know better than leave the departed boss unsecured for any robber or foreign agent to steal and hold the stiff for ransom.
Also the climax, where quite frankly I lost interest and my attention waned, and I'm not sure what the point here is. I assume its that the sick Rourke, refusing to budge in lowering down the standards of his Order, heads into the woods and basically prays (?) himself to death, but beforehand he suffers the the first Stigmata. Is Cavani trying to say that because he never faltered in living the honest life, a real Christian, that God indeed in connotation "crucifies" him as a martyr like he did to his only begotten son? I have no idea, I'm just guessing, and I wish I could have felt that allegory, because its quite a good dramatic idea. Also, maybe St. Francis in this director's cut had to fight robbers and badgers, which is why despite poverty and famine, he still keeps up a great body?
I do ask also if there was more coverage of the Rourke and Helena Bonham Carter (as Clare of Assisi) dynamics in that uncut Italian release. Certainly I liked the not-very-subtle concept that there is a love triangle between him, her, and Jesus...but neither can't or won't leave the Big Man in the Sky, so their unrelished heat is transmuted into their religious fervor. So near, yet so far away. A great wide shot with great concealed implications is when after Rourke returns from Rome, their body language suggests they were going to embrace in a loving matter, but then they catch themselves and just grasp in a friendly matter. Again, why wasn't the rest of FRANCESCO as clever as that moment? Carter was very young, about 23 at the time, but already she was an obvious feminine thespian force to wreckon with.
Also its pretty funny that a chaste female Italian Saint later played Marla Sanger in FIGHT CLUB. Maybe she figured Brad Pitt was a trade-up from Rourke? In Tyler Durden We Trust. :cool:
What shocks me though with the talent involved is how shoddy and appalling the production values are, despite filming on location in Italy, like more a glorified television movie or those cheesy TBN cheapo Bible movies that your Christian Grandmother gets in the mail. Look I'm willing to look over such defects if a production overcomes with innovation or a good story or whatever, but FRANCESCO doesn't. Though the Catholic Church, who I guess saw the Italian cut, doesn't mind them for they are a big fan of FRANCESCO, and inducted it into its prestigious Vatican Film List along with 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, THE WIZARD OF OZ, CITIZEN KANE, BEN-HUR, and the other St. Francis movie, the 1950 Robert Rossellini flick FRANCIS, GOD'S JESTER (aka THE FLOWERS OF ST. FRANCIS)....but not LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST. :mad:
decentfilms.com/sections/articles/vaticanfilmlist.html
So Cavani has that bragging right over Scorsese at least.
FRANCESCO is a polarizing movie with many detractors despising it, usually simply because of Rourke, and a subborn minority very vocal in their defense of it. I can't totally be fair to FRANCESCO without seeing the full cut, but I'm inbetween, for I won't recommend this for general audiences or even to my more dedicated cinemaphile comrades, but I will say that it was intriging at times, otherwise times too vague and perhaps sublime for its own good. But if you must want a reason to check it out of its obscurity, do so because of a stunt lead casting that is a miracle if at least because it didn't fail like many would expect.