Tetro Blu-ray review

I was given Tetro on Blu-ray as a Christmas present but was late seeing it as with Francis Ford Coppola’s previous release Youth Without Youth I actually expected to be very disappointed in it, luckily this was not the case and its Clearly his best fully original script since The Conversation and his most personal movie since Apocalypse Now, I was so invested in it that I wished it was another 30 minutes long.

Tetro’s premise is actually very mild. Bennie, a waiter on a cruise ship, decides to search for his long-lost older brother, Angelo, while on shore leave in Buenos Aires. He discovers him living with his common-law wife Miranda (Maribel Verdú), only now he calls himself ‘Tetro’ and affirms that he no longer wants to have anything to do with his real family. Angelo and Bennie are the sons of a famous conductor although they had different mothers; Angelo’s was an opera singer who was killed in a car accident while behind the wheel and that, along with another incident between him and his father over a mutual lover, has left him mentally and emotionally scarred.

What struck me immediately about Tetro is how good it looks, I was skeptical as I knew it was taken entirely digitally, but Mihai Malaimare Junior’s 1080p/24 source HDCAM photography is stunning, shot predominantly in monochrome with a 2.35:1 aspect ratio but choosing to use a smaller ratio for the 1960s home movie style, washed-out color flashbacks, and full “Technicolor” for the Powell-inspired ballet fantasy sequences and Pressburger. There is obviously no loss of quality in transferring this to Blu-ray and the footage from the film is demo material and further proof that there will be life after celluloid on this medium.

Newcomer Alden Ehrenreich is a revelation like Bennie, not many young actors can hold their own in their screen debut against the force of nature that is Vincent Gallo, who embodies the damaged Tetro with equal measures of self-serving charm and self-loathing. severe. ; the acting across the board is impeccable, as with most of Coppola’s productions he insists on a great deal of reading, rehearsing and improv time before shooting and it always pays off on camera.

Bennie can’t understand why Tetro is so cold to him, especially after leaving him a note saying she’d come back to New York for him at some point. Both brothers have aspirations to become writers but Tetro along with his past has abandoned his great play, an unfinished play about his father, but when Bennie discovers it in a dusty suitcase he sees not only an opportunity to finish the story but to put it on. on stage. the local cafe theater where Tetro turns on the lights may force him to face his demons.

In the few scenes in which Klaus Maria Brandauer appears, he brings great presence to the double role of the older Tetrocini brothers and Coppola reveals just enough for us to understand the dynamics between the rival brothers; as maestro Carlo, he is effortlessly charismatic, his fame and fortune seduce the girlfriend of his son Angelo, and as Alfredo you see an older man forced to live in the shadow of the success of his younger brother. he. These themes recur in the future generation of Tetrocini brothers with Angelo envying Bennie’s acclaim when his final version of his work titled “Wander Lust” is shortlisted for first prize at the Patagonia Festival and wins the mysterious critic’s approval.” Alone” performed by Pedro Almodóvar’s muse, Carmen Maura; Tetro had once been her protégé, but they had a falling out over artistic differences.

I won’t spoil the film’s climactic twist that occurs in the extended Patagonia sequence that many reviewers have outright dismissed as self-indulgent without one I’ve read bothering to comment that stylistically it’s very obviously an homage to Federico Fellini and without conscious doubt of its unreal quality. I want to say that Tetro could very well be the best film of the decade, but I know I would be exaggerating, however, it is without a doubt Francis Ford Coppola’s best film in a long time and as such it should be considered as he is. one of the true artists working in cinema today.