La terra

I saw this movie at the 2007 Italian Film Festival (now in its third year at Washington University in St. Louis) and found it to be an extraordinary work of art. With a strong script, great acting, complex characters, and wonderful-looking actors--as only the Italians seem to be able to do!--it deserves to be seen by the widest-possible audience, and I can only hope it gets shown, if it hasn't already, in cineplexes across the country. (Dream on, right?!) Even though the movie is, in part, an old-fashioned murder mystery, in reality it's a story about relationships--between lovers, parents and their children, among brothers, and, probably most poignantly, the centuries-old love affair Italians have for each other and their uniquely rich way of life.