A Movie With A Thesis
Added 9/21/2009
I am a fan of challenging visual media, I will cite the Aeon Flux shorts, The Seventh Seal, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon as examples of works produced by artists who pour their hearts out to get a complex idea across in a way that can be felt, not just told.
I believe that John Turturro is trying to express the idea that art, to function well, must be inseparable from life. Starting from this thesis, all of the choices he has made in Illuminata change from "incompetent" or "confusing" to parts of a whole that function collectively to change a single idea into a palpable work of art.
For example, it was noted that the audience sometimes can't tell when actors are speaking lines from the play and when they are actually speaking to each other. Far from a blunder, this ambiguity was essential to the message of the film, a physical representation of its thesis.
Though it is present from the film's very first scene, the idea of art/life ambiguity is manifested most clearly during the scene outside the theater in which Dominique and Rachel are simultaneously running their lines and working out the details of Tuccio's alleged betrayal. Their crisis of realities is made physical for the audience by the fact that the characters in the scene can not, in that moment, tell whether they are speaking to each other in character or in real life. The audince must struggle to follow their conversation just as the characters are struggling to separate the real from the artificial.
In an excellent example of dramatic unity, this ambiguity then fuels the film's resolution, in which Tuccio and Rachel fight and are then reunited by the speech on the merits of imperfect love. This speech ultimately provides the missing ending for Tuccio's play, but, since it has never been spoken before the fight, the viewer is never sure if Rachel spoke it spontaneously as part of their real-life fight, or if she was quoting something Tuccio had written for the play. This ambiguity, I believe, is exactly as intended. Because the film is about the merging of art and life, the audience, in order to feel them unite, must not be sure where art ends and life begins.
I realize that this is not a film for everyone; however, if you enjoy films that bear deep analysis and that still evoke wonder, please add it to your library.
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Illuminata
Added 4/5/2008
It has become one of our favorite movies. Strongly recommend for any theater lover. Script is original and funny, acting is just superb. Service was excellent - DVD delivered in 2 days.
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Almost TOO smart for it's own good!
Added 2/26/2007
Beautifully and artfully conceived and filmed,ILLUMINATA, which hosts an incredibly diverse and multi-talented cast under the direction of John Turturro,is magnificent and yet horribly convoluted.Do not bat an eyelash or you will miss something in this dialogue-laden,multi-character driven farce about the bizarre world of live theatre.It all comes together in the end,but getting there can be a bit dodgey at best.ILLUMINATA may just be a little TOO smart for it's own good.Definitely not light and frothy entertainment, but a highly complex film that requires the utmost of concentration. [...]
1 out of 1 people found this helpful.
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Horrendously overplayed, wildly unsuccessful
Added 11/11/2005
How can a film with such a cast be so little known? Well, sadly because it just isn't any good. And equally sadly, the blame seems to rest fairly and squarely on John Turturo's shoulders, who fails as co-writer, leading man and director to ever bring a cohesiveness to his material. To call it disjointed is being kind.
Illuminata is one of those films where you can see what the original appeal was but which just wears you down as it gets worse and worse and worse while intermittently throwing you a bone only to snatch it away. The screenplay is a complete mess, John Turturo's direction extremely poor and the tone horrendously uneven, not simply from scene to scene but from actor to actor: some of them don't even seem to be acting in the same movie. With the very honorable exceptions of Katherine Borowitz and Rufus Sewell, most of the stellar cast embarrass themselves on a regular basis with outrageously unfunny OTT performances that are out of place even in a backstage period piece.
It's easy to imagine Woody Allen circa Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy being able to tame the material and bring out its strengths, but Turturo just lets it run all over the place, with the bad all too often swamping the brief passages of good dialog completely. A pity.
1 out of 2 people found this helpful.
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Inticing the Senses...
Added 2/11/2004
This is a movie of free spirits, truely for romantics who can appriciate the brilliant colours and scenery, which this movie supplies. It has witty dialoge and will be sure to grab all of your senses. It is sensual and magnificent. Reds of pomegranate, and blues of lover's eyes... everything beautiful and pure. This movie is not dull, but subdued. If you are not in love, you will want to be.
2 out of 2 people found this helpful.
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