Kaos

1986 • 186 minutes

About this movie

Luigi Pirandello is best known in the English-speaking world for his plays, but in Italy he's equally renowned as a short-story writer. For their most ambitious feature film, Paolo and Vittorio Taviani drew upon six (for a prologue, four full-length stories and an epilogue), setting them in Pirandello's native Sicily at the turn of the 20th century, a harsh and unforgiving but visually astonishing backdrop against which all kinds of dramas unfold, each initially seen from the vantage point of a crow soaring over the landscape. Mariagrazia's two favoured sons have emigrated to America and lost contact with her, whereas she refuses to acknowledge the one who stayed. On the first full moon after her wedding, Sidora discovers the horrific truth about a husband that she barely knows. A large olive jar is broken, with awkward consequences for owner and repairer alike. A tiny village's inhabitants petition their landowner for the right to bury their dead respectfully. And Pirandello himself (Omero Antonutti, Padre Padrone) has a conversation with his long-dead mother.