Adrian Barich: Life Is Beautiful, Dead Poets Society and Spotlight are just some movies that make you feel
I mean, as in, you've found yourself lying or sitting there afterwards, in silence, touched by something you've just seen. That was me last week, rewatching the 1997 movie Life Is Beautiful.
I didn't know if I was sad, happy or just simply stunned.
This was a movie that came out at the turn of the century, which was so powerful that I thought about it for days after I watched it again.
When I first saw the film, I honestly thought it was a romantic comedy. I have always been partial to a good spaghetti western, especially featuring Terence Hill and Bud Spencer, so watching Life Is Beautiful didn't seem a big stretch.
And for the first hour or so, it did seem like a rom-com in its own quirky, Italian way.
Roberto Benigni's character, Guido, is all charm and chaos, winning over the love of his life with slapstick humour. It was funny. Warm. Light on its feet.
Then, without warning, it turns. And by the end, it's something else entirely: something devastatingly human, or maybe inhuman.
At the time, it didn't quite connect (mind you, in my 30s I was probably about as deep as puddle). I was younger and without kids, so I hadn't yet felt what it means to want to protect someone so badly that you'd bend reality for them.
Watching it now, it felt like a gut punch.
Guido, now a father, finds himself and his young son in a nazi concentration camp. To shield the boy from the horror, he creates a fantasy: that it's all a game. If the boy follows the 'rules' and earns enough points, he'll win a real tank.
Years later, the boy, who's now grown up, calls that illusion 'his gift to me'.
I may not have fully understood that message when I first saw the film, but I do now. That line strikes a chord: it makes you think about what it means to shield someone, not out of deception, but out of love.
Lately, the world feels pretty heavy, doesn't it? And there are all sorts of headlines that you may want to shield your kids or grandkids from.
And so, it's got some of us thinking about sanctuaries. Not just physical spaces, but emotional ones. A grandparent's house. A mate's shed. A treehouse. A conversation you don't have. The ability to hold back the world for just a bit longer, until they're ready.
We live in an age where information, especially of the worst kind, is just about impossible to avoid.
Kids see more than we ever did. So the instinct remains: to preserve a little innocence for as long as we can.
It's not a new idea; sometimes harsh life lessons delivered through stories have been around since Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm were boys.
And the final moments have always been used to cut through everything and hit you 'in the feels'.
I remember feeling shaken when I walked out of the film Spotlight, about journalists at The Boston Globe uncovering child abuse in the city's Catholic church. The slow scroll of cities and towns where priests had been accused of abuse went on for page after page, and left me speechless.
Or that moment in Dead Poets Society, when Todd climbs on the desk and says, 'O Captain! My Captain!' It was the kind of scene you never forget.
Even that mighty TV comedy Blackadder got real in its final episode. Set in the trenches of World War I, in the final three minutes, Blackadder stopped being a comedy and became a tribute to the futility of war: one of the most subtly powerful anti-war statements ever seen.
And what about the final scene of The Shawshank Redemption, when Andy Dufresne finally reaches the Pacific? Freedom, hope and friendship all washing ashore.
And while I've got you, let's think about The Usual Suspects. That twist when Verbal Kint is revealed to be Keyser Soze left me gobsmacked. Some people reckon they saw that coming; yeah, right.
I've lost count of how many people swear they knew all along that Bruce Willis was a ghost in The Sixth Sense. Roughly equivalent to how many blokes are adamant they were sitting right behind Dom Sheed, when he kicked the winning goal in the 2018 AFL Grand Final.
It's like that most famous of all endings, when it's revealed in Planet Of The Apes that that the space adventure was actually playing out on Earth. I'll admit that I was as confused as Charlton Heston when he saw the Statue of Liberty buried in the sand.
I've spent most of my life reporting on sport — Eagles' premierships, triumphant wins, heartbreaking losses and all the drama in between. And as I've said previously, sport matters. But other stories can remind you what's really important.
Heroic acts don't just happen in stadiums. Sometimes they happen in kitchens. In bedtime stories. In the choice to tell your child that the world is still a safe place. In pretending, just for a little while longer, that life is beautiful.
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The Advertiser
6 hours ago
- The Advertiser
This Irish romantic drama takes its sweet time, to be sure
Truman Capote wrote, "More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones." In this film, God seems to be playing with that idea, toying with people's hopes and dreams and lives, giving them inspiration that leads to suffering, and granting at least some wishes but with a twist or a capricious sense of timing. Or maybe it's all down to some other kind of supernatural goings-on, or to fate. Or, if you're not into such metaphysical speculations, maybe things like coincidence just happen. This Irish romantic drama takes its sweet time to unfold and then crams a lot towards the end in a rush that hinders, rather than enhances, its impact. We have to wait a long time before the young lovers even meet, and even longer to discover what the title means. Niall Williams adapted his own novel: it's his first movie script, and the task might have been better entrusted to a screenwriter with more experience and objectivity. Four Letters of Love is also full of cliches from the Emerald Isle and from movies set there. Dancing merry jigs to jolly songs? Tick. A stern Mother Superior at a drab Catholic girls' boarding school? Tick. Impractical husbands and longsuffering wives? A score featuring wordless, ethereal female vocals? To be sure, to be sure. There are no banshees, but there do appear to be ghosts. There's also some spectacular scenery, gorgeously shot by Damien Elliott. The story begins in the 1970s. One day at the office, civil servant William Coughlin (Pierce Brosnan) has an epiphany and chucks in his job to become a painter. He abruptly leaves his wife Bette (Imelda May) and son Nicholas (Fionn O'Shea) to head west, leaving them bewildered and poor: Bette never recovers from the shock, and William comes and goes as he pleases. Meanwhile, on the island where William goes to paint, Isabel (Ann Skelly) is helping to care for her brother Sean (Donal Finn), who's wheelchair-bound and mute after a stroke. Isabel's parents - schoolteacher Muiris (Gabriel Byrne) and mother Margaret (Helena Bonham Carter) - send her off to a boarding school but she runs away and takes up with Peadar (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo), a musician with a car. He's an underdeveloped character, essentially a plot contrivance to complicate things between Nicholas and Isabel, but he's not a cardboard cad. Williams and experienced director Polly Steele (Let Me Go) do a fair job of juggling the moves between time and place but sometimes important elements - like a painting by William that plays a crucial role - aren't dealt with as clearly or skilfully as they should be. As mentioned, it takes a long time for Nicholas and Isabel to meet, after a near miss or two, and their falling in love feels rather too rushed and underplayed. Not that the full gushing Hollywood treatment was needed but the handling seems clumsy. The way Nicholas is kept around for story purposes isn't entirely convincing either. There's an air of muted fatalism about things: people don't seem to get too passionate or upset. The film benefits from a fine cast. O'Shea was very likeable in the heartwarming boarding-school drama Handsome Devil (in which he starred with Nicholas Galitzine) and, playing a fairly subdued character here, is a sympathetic hero throughout. Skelly is also very good: you hope things will end well for them. Brosnan seems slightly odd casting as a scruffy bohemian but he and the other veterans are good to have around. Romantic dramas can end happily or tragically, hopefully or bittersweetly: without spoiling the film, the ending doesn't seem entirely clear, which is a little frustrating. But the painting, when finally viewed, does have some impact. It, like the film, could have had more. Truman Capote wrote, "More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones." In this film, God seems to be playing with that idea, toying with people's hopes and dreams and lives, giving them inspiration that leads to suffering, and granting at least some wishes but with a twist or a capricious sense of timing. Or maybe it's all down to some other kind of supernatural goings-on, or to fate. Or, if you're not into such metaphysical speculations, maybe things like coincidence just happen. This Irish romantic drama takes its sweet time to unfold and then crams a lot towards the end in a rush that hinders, rather than enhances, its impact. We have to wait a long time before the young lovers even meet, and even longer to discover what the title means. Niall Williams adapted his own novel: it's his first movie script, and the task might have been better entrusted to a screenwriter with more experience and objectivity. Four Letters of Love is also full of cliches from the Emerald Isle and from movies set there. Dancing merry jigs to jolly songs? Tick. A stern Mother Superior at a drab Catholic girls' boarding school? Tick. Impractical husbands and longsuffering wives? A score featuring wordless, ethereal female vocals? To be sure, to be sure. There are no banshees, but there do appear to be ghosts. There's also some spectacular scenery, gorgeously shot by Damien Elliott. The story begins in the 1970s. One day at the office, civil servant William Coughlin (Pierce Brosnan) has an epiphany and chucks in his job to become a painter. He abruptly leaves his wife Bette (Imelda May) and son Nicholas (Fionn O'Shea) to head west, leaving them bewildered and poor: Bette never recovers from the shock, and William comes and goes as he pleases. Meanwhile, on the island where William goes to paint, Isabel (Ann Skelly) is helping to care for her brother Sean (Donal Finn), who's wheelchair-bound and mute after a stroke. Isabel's parents - schoolteacher Muiris (Gabriel Byrne) and mother Margaret (Helena Bonham Carter) - send her off to a boarding school but she runs away and takes up with Peadar (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo), a musician with a car. He's an underdeveloped character, essentially a plot contrivance to complicate things between Nicholas and Isabel, but he's not a cardboard cad. Williams and experienced director Polly Steele (Let Me Go) do a fair job of juggling the moves between time and place but sometimes important elements - like a painting by William that plays a crucial role - aren't dealt with as clearly or skilfully as they should be. As mentioned, it takes a long time for Nicholas and Isabel to meet, after a near miss or two, and their falling in love feels rather too rushed and underplayed. Not that the full gushing Hollywood treatment was needed but the handling seems clumsy. The way Nicholas is kept around for story purposes isn't entirely convincing either. There's an air of muted fatalism about things: people don't seem to get too passionate or upset. The film benefits from a fine cast. O'Shea was very likeable in the heartwarming boarding-school drama Handsome Devil (in which he starred with Nicholas Galitzine) and, playing a fairly subdued character here, is a sympathetic hero throughout. Skelly is also very good: you hope things will end well for them. Brosnan seems slightly odd casting as a scruffy bohemian but he and the other veterans are good to have around. Romantic dramas can end happily or tragically, hopefully or bittersweetly: without spoiling the film, the ending doesn't seem entirely clear, which is a little frustrating. But the painting, when finally viewed, does have some impact. It, like the film, could have had more. Truman Capote wrote, "More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones." In this film, God seems to be playing with that idea, toying with people's hopes and dreams and lives, giving them inspiration that leads to suffering, and granting at least some wishes but with a twist or a capricious sense of timing. Or maybe it's all down to some other kind of supernatural goings-on, or to fate. Or, if you're not into such metaphysical speculations, maybe things like coincidence just happen. This Irish romantic drama takes its sweet time to unfold and then crams a lot towards the end in a rush that hinders, rather than enhances, its impact. We have to wait a long time before the young lovers even meet, and even longer to discover what the title means. Niall Williams adapted his own novel: it's his first movie script, and the task might have been better entrusted to a screenwriter with more experience and objectivity. Four Letters of Love is also full of cliches from the Emerald Isle and from movies set there. Dancing merry jigs to jolly songs? Tick. A stern Mother Superior at a drab Catholic girls' boarding school? Tick. Impractical husbands and longsuffering wives? A score featuring wordless, ethereal female vocals? To be sure, to be sure. There are no banshees, but there do appear to be ghosts. There's also some spectacular scenery, gorgeously shot by Damien Elliott. The story begins in the 1970s. One day at the office, civil servant William Coughlin (Pierce Brosnan) has an epiphany and chucks in his job to become a painter. He abruptly leaves his wife Bette (Imelda May) and son Nicholas (Fionn O'Shea) to head west, leaving them bewildered and poor: Bette never recovers from the shock, and William comes and goes as he pleases. Meanwhile, on the island where William goes to paint, Isabel (Ann Skelly) is helping to care for her brother Sean (Donal Finn), who's wheelchair-bound and mute after a stroke. Isabel's parents - schoolteacher Muiris (Gabriel Byrne) and mother Margaret (Helena Bonham Carter) - send her off to a boarding school but she runs away and takes up with Peadar (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo), a musician with a car. He's an underdeveloped character, essentially a plot contrivance to complicate things between Nicholas and Isabel, but he's not a cardboard cad. Williams and experienced director Polly Steele (Let Me Go) do a fair job of juggling the moves between time and place but sometimes important elements - like a painting by William that plays a crucial role - aren't dealt with as clearly or skilfully as they should be. As mentioned, it takes a long time for Nicholas and Isabel to meet, after a near miss or two, and their falling in love feels rather too rushed and underplayed. Not that the full gushing Hollywood treatment was needed but the handling seems clumsy. The way Nicholas is kept around for story purposes isn't entirely convincing either. There's an air of muted fatalism about things: people don't seem to get too passionate or upset. The film benefits from a fine cast. O'Shea was very likeable in the heartwarming boarding-school drama Handsome Devil (in which he starred with Nicholas Galitzine) and, playing a fairly subdued character here, is a sympathetic hero throughout. Skelly is also very good: you hope things will end well for them. Brosnan seems slightly odd casting as a scruffy bohemian but he and the other veterans are good to have around. Romantic dramas can end happily or tragically, hopefully or bittersweetly: without spoiling the film, the ending doesn't seem entirely clear, which is a little frustrating. But the painting, when finally viewed, does have some impact. It, like the film, could have had more. Truman Capote wrote, "More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones." In this film, God seems to be playing with that idea, toying with people's hopes and dreams and lives, giving them inspiration that leads to suffering, and granting at least some wishes but with a twist or a capricious sense of timing. Or maybe it's all down to some other kind of supernatural goings-on, or to fate. Or, if you're not into such metaphysical speculations, maybe things like coincidence just happen. This Irish romantic drama takes its sweet time to unfold and then crams a lot towards the end in a rush that hinders, rather than enhances, its impact. We have to wait a long time before the young lovers even meet, and even longer to discover what the title means. Niall Williams adapted his own novel: it's his first movie script, and the task might have been better entrusted to a screenwriter with more experience and objectivity. Four Letters of Love is also full of cliches from the Emerald Isle and from movies set there. Dancing merry jigs to jolly songs? Tick. A stern Mother Superior at a drab Catholic girls' boarding school? Tick. Impractical husbands and longsuffering wives? A score featuring wordless, ethereal female vocals? To be sure, to be sure. There are no banshees, but there do appear to be ghosts. There's also some spectacular scenery, gorgeously shot by Damien Elliott. The story begins in the 1970s. One day at the office, civil servant William Coughlin (Pierce Brosnan) has an epiphany and chucks in his job to become a painter. He abruptly leaves his wife Bette (Imelda May) and son Nicholas (Fionn O'Shea) to head west, leaving them bewildered and poor: Bette never recovers from the shock, and William comes and goes as he pleases. Meanwhile, on the island where William goes to paint, Isabel (Ann Skelly) is helping to care for her brother Sean (Donal Finn), who's wheelchair-bound and mute after a stroke. Isabel's parents - schoolteacher Muiris (Gabriel Byrne) and mother Margaret (Helena Bonham Carter) - send her off to a boarding school but she runs away and takes up with Peadar (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo), a musician with a car. He's an underdeveloped character, essentially a plot contrivance to complicate things between Nicholas and Isabel, but he's not a cardboard cad. Williams and experienced director Polly Steele (Let Me Go) do a fair job of juggling the moves between time and place but sometimes important elements - like a painting by William that plays a crucial role - aren't dealt with as clearly or skilfully as they should be. As mentioned, it takes a long time for Nicholas and Isabel to meet, after a near miss or two, and their falling in love feels rather too rushed and underplayed. Not that the full gushing Hollywood treatment was needed but the handling seems clumsy. The way Nicholas is kept around for story purposes isn't entirely convincing either. There's an air of muted fatalism about things: people don't seem to get too passionate or upset. The film benefits from a fine cast. O'Shea was very likeable in the heartwarming boarding-school drama Handsome Devil (in which he starred with Nicholas Galitzine) and, playing a fairly subdued character here, is a sympathetic hero throughout. Skelly is also very good: you hope things will end well for them. Brosnan seems slightly odd casting as a scruffy bohemian but he and the other veterans are good to have around. Romantic dramas can end happily or tragically, hopefully or bittersweetly: without spoiling the film, the ending doesn't seem entirely clear, which is a little frustrating. But the painting, when finally viewed, does have some impact. It, like the film, could have had more.
Perth Now
13 hours ago
- Perth Now
Mark Consuelos 'chose right' when he married Kelly Ripa
Mark Consuelos thinks he chose the "right" partner in Kelly Ripa. The loved-up celebrity couple are set to celebrate their 30th wedding anniversary next year, and Mark has revealed that they remain as close as they ever have been. Mark, 54 - who co-hosts Live with his wife - told People: "I've been planning with this lady here since the day I met her and that's part of the beauty, I think, of our relationship is always making plans for what comes next. Some are really exciting, some are a little scary, but that's [life]." Mark thinks he made a perfect decision when he decided to marry Kelly in Las Vegas in 1996. The TV star said: "I think you have to choose somebody that you can dream with and I surely chose right." Asked if he can share any secrets about their anniversary plans, Mark replied: "You'll know when we do it." Meanwhile, Kelly previously claimed that Mark was "insanely jealous" during the early years of their romance. The talk-show host admitted that she initially struggled to cope with Mark's jealously. During an appearance on the Let's Talk Off Camera podcast, Kelly explained: "My biggest complaint about you over the course of our marriage, and this is not recent because it definitely changed ... but you used to be insanely jealous and that was a hard pill to swallow ... It's very hard being married to somebody who is jealous." Kelly recalled one particular incident that took place shortly after they tied the knot. During a conversation with Mark, she shared: "It was our first week of marriage, because we didn't take our honeymoon until later. You were working and I went to visit you in Boston. "We went to this Italian restaurant and the waiter was like a very cute old man, he's definitely in his 70s, if not 80s. He leaned down and he said, 'And for the principessa?' "I thought it was so cute that this little old man called me a princess, and I looked at him and I gave him my order in a very smiley way. And he walked away and you picked a horrible fight."
Sydney Morning Herald
19 hours ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
Bet you've never had steak and pepper sauce like this before, Melbourne
Previous SlideNext Slide Gambino is a huge deal for Glen Waverley, a south-eastern suburb rich in eating options but not so great for a Big Night Out. When this two-level venue opened last December, it instantly became the area's fanciest Italian place and its most glamorous rooftop, giving locals a reason to ditch the city or South Yarra for a full, fun evening closer to home: aperitivo, dinner and kick-ons all in one venue. At the station end of the Kingsway eating strip, a glass lift spills you into the fifth-floor restaurant, a chic, sleek, blue-velvet cave with lamp-lit tables. Could-be-anywhere views to the eastern hills are especially transporting from the semi-private lounge that's strung with fake but fab lemon branches. If the 90-seat restaurant is Milan, the sixth-floor rooftop is Capri, with accents in sunny yellow. Heaters and shutters do their darnedest to turn Melbourne winter into Euro summer, gamely assisted by spicy prawn pizza and cocktails like the 'strawgroni' with gin, berry-infused Campari and chocolate bitters. Unfortunately, there's no wheelchair access to the roof. The restaurant's smart menu allows you to steer casual or fine dining, with seasoned waiters helming the floor. Chef Adrian Li – also a partner in Armadale's Zia Rina's Cucina – became known at city hotel-diner La Madonna for his quirky spin on Caprese salad. He reprises it here: a whole tomato is deep-fried so the skin slips off cleanly. The scalped sphere is infused with soy sauce, stuffed with stracciatella cheese and served in a pool of basil oil, ready to ooze curds when cut. The drama is undeniable, but the fandangling makes me hanker for the original. I'd rather wait for summer and eat a sun-drenched one. The theatre curtain goes up again for eye fillet topped with a sturdy raviolo that releases 100 millilitres of mushroom sauce when pierced. This is a tricky dish and it pays off in spectacle, the flavoursome sauce pooling perfectly onto the plate. To make it, mushroom gravy is set with gelatin in a pasta parcel, ready to liquefy when simmered. Finessing the pasta thickness and filling consistency was so challenging that when Li nailed it, he nearly fell down the stairs running to announce his success. This is a tricky dish and it pays off in spectacle, the flavoursome sauce pooling perfectly onto the plate. I'd probably take a tumble if I invented the excellent bombe Alaska. The sweetness of the meringue casing and sponge base is offset by a lemon-sorbet core and a semifreddo layer infused with finger lime. Flambeed at the table, it's a spiky ball of joy. It's not all bells and whistles. The crescentina, a fried-dough sandwich from Modena in northern Italy, is pure, button-pushing delight. Little pucks of pizza dough are filled with crisped mortadella, smoked mozzarella and pickled green tomato. A crudo of ruby-red tuna is overlaid with spice-cured prawns, the textures sublime but the chilli whack slightly overwhelming the lovely seafood. Tortellini are filled with chive-spiked goat's curd and settled in a buttery emulsion with roasted pumpkin and parmesan cream, a vegetarian dish that's classic and refined. Everyone involved has a stake in the neighbourhood – and it shows. Two owners, Garen Maskal and Aret Arzadian, have Latin American The Black Toro, which has just clocked up 13 years on Kingsway. Their business partner here is Craig Lane, a longtime hairdresser in the 'hood and owner of several nearby eateries. Chef Li grew up down the road and is keen to see the area thrive. Gambino is an optimistic outreach to locals: spend close to home and be rewarded with class and generosity. Good Food Guide.
