Padre Padrone (1977)

Padre Padrone (1977)

Director: Paolo Taviani, Vittorio Taviani
Writers: Gavino Ledda, Paolo Taviani
Stars: Omero Antonutti, Saverio Marconi, Marcella Michelangeli
Runtime: 114 minutes        

Plot: The true story of the life of Gavino Ledda, the son of a Sardinian shepherd, and how he managed to escape his harsh, almost barbaric existence by slowly educating himself, despite violent opposition from his brutal father.

Review: The film's beginning, and its most stirring segment, presents a 6-year-old boy being taken out of school and sent off to tend a flock on a desolate, ruggedly beautiful mountainside. His father, who beats young Gavino, inducts the boy into his new way of life in the cruellest manner possible.

Years later, when Gavino begins bridling under his father's authority, angling for a chance to escape, his battle is fought along more familiar lines. Gavino enlists in the army and travels to the Italian mainland, where he begins to educate himself and delight in the precise meaning of words. "Padre Padrone" is stirringly affirmative. It's also a bit simple: The patriarchal behaviour of Gavino's father is as readily accepted as an unfathomable given constant that the film never offers much insight into the man or the culture that fostered him. But the film is vivid and very moving, coarse but seldom blunt, and filled with raw landscapes that underscore the naturalness and inevitability of the father-son rituals it depicts.

Reviewed by Mohaiminul Islam