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'Padre Padrone' is based on noted linguist Gavino Ledda's autobiography which came out in 1975. The distinguished directors, the Taviani brothers, brought the story to the screen two years later. Ledda chronicles his childhood, adolescence and young adulthood, growing up under the yoke of his tyrannical father, a sheep herder from Sardinia.
'Padre Pardone' opens with a cameo from the real-life Gavino introducing the story directly to the audience. He brings us back to the time when he was in elementary school, when his father suddenly appeared one day and pulled him out of class for good. The father brings him to an isolated area in Sardinia with the intent of molding the very young child into a sheep herder. The child is forced to watch the property in an isolated area, Baddevrùstana, while his father is off tending to business in Siligo, a provincial town close by. Since the only means of travel is by mule, Gavino finds himself alone on inhospitable turf.
Gavino tries to make contact with other children who are forced to work for their fathers in the same way and he ends up being punished for it. The corporal punishment includes beatings with spiny tree branches which is mentioned in the autobiography. In the film it's not as clear, as we see the beatings with the branches from a distance. We do see a scene in the film where the father goes a little too far, where it appears Gavino loses consciousness for a short while (the father brings the son a cup of water to revive him).
In another memorable scene, Gavino buys a broken accordion from two passersby and pays them with two sheep. Gavino lies to his father that he was attacked by bandits who stole the sheep. He shows his father his (self-inflicted) cut on the mouth but the father doesn't buy his story and cuts his rations.
Due to the isolation of the male children as their fathers force them to work the entire time tending to the sheep, they have little or no contact with the opposite sex and develop some rather unhealthy sexual proclivities. A few scenes of bestiality are prominent during the first third of the film, including Gavino getting it on a with a mule and a group of boys masturbating with the aid of chickens they're attending to inside a coop.
Once Gavino grows up, we meet him next when he's twenty. Gavino's father somehow inherits an olive grove under dubious circumstances. After a landowner is killed by a rival, Gavino's family helps the widow with the funeral arrangements and disposing of the property. The widow, in fear for her life, decides to move away from the area, but gives Gavino's father the olive grove as compensation for their help. Gavino's father plans to cede the grove to his offspring following his death but a frost destroys all the orchards in the area, including the family's olive grove.
Gavino's father then decides to sell his herd and all this property, except for a garden. The children are shipped off as laborers but the father ships Gavino off to the Army. Before he leaves, the father teaches him some rudimentary math and reading so he can be accepted into the Army, as they will not accept someone who is completely illiterate.
While in the Army, with the help of a friend, Gavino eventually learns how to read and write. He also completes a course in electronics and learns how to assemble a radio. When his enlistment period is over, against his father's wishes, he quits the army and decides to enroll at the University of Sardinia to study linguistics. Gavino's father forces him to work long hours in the garden which interferes with his studies and eventually the two have a physical confrontation. Now much stronger than his father, Gavino wrestles him down to the ground and humiliates the old man. Gavino concludes it's best that he leave his father's home and then goes off to the university to later become a distinguished professor of linguistics.
It should be noted that the Taviani brothers are not out to condemn the brutality of the patriarchal society they're examining. While Gavino's father is sometimes brutal, in his eyes, he still has Gavino's best interests at heart. A good deal of the father's behavior toward his son is more 'tough love' than continuing acts of sadism. In many ways, he's ambivalent toward Gavino. In a most telling scene at the end, Gavino is looking for his valise under his father's bed, who's sitting right there after being humiliated after their wrestling match. As Gavino looks under the bed, the father is about to gently stroke his son's head but then clenches his fist, as if to strike him. In the denouement, we see that there were no further physical confrontations.
Not everything in 'Padre Padrone' works. Most notably, none of the other family members are developed as fleshed-out characters. The sound quality of the film is also quite poor, as if we were listening to dialogue dubbed in the studio. Questionable experimental techniques are also utilized including animal and child voice-overs and sub-titles that seem to come out of the blue.
'Padre Padrone' is comprised of a series of interesting vignettes about a world most of us are not familiar with. While the father may seem a bit one-note, the intensity between father and son is absorbing. 'Padre Padrone' can sometimes be infuriatingly slow-moving but one finds oneself waiting to find out how the relationship between the father and son is resolved. I'm not sure if this film is a true 'classic', but it's worth a look at least once, if not twice.
score 6/10
Turfseer 3 October 2012
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2683221/ |
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7-4-2021 04:59:03