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Rating:  -
Great little movie about the traumas of childhood and childrens' resilient, forgiving nature, dramatically and accurately illustrated in many scenes. No matter what happens, the little boy bounces back. Unfortunately, much of the dialogue is difficult to hear, and there are no English subtitles. Even using headphones doesn't offer that much help.
This is typical of the 'English sound syndrome' (even though the movie is Australian), and I wonder how some movies can even be issued in this condition. Most American movies have at least some measure of re-recording and mixing rather than just pure location sound, not enhanced in any way.
Rating: -
"Romulus, My Father" is being touted as an ode to father-son relationships. As portrayed by this film, however, it plays more as a tribute to childhood resilience. The father suffers through incredible loss, but his son seems more profoundly affected by the damaged adults around him. Franka Potente and Eric Bana provide solid performances, but the true star is Kodi McPhee, who has to wrestle with a wide array of emotion. He succeeds completely. There wasn't one false note in his portrayal of the son of a mentally-disturbed mother and an aloof, brooding father. Kodi shows more emotion in one scene than Bana and Potente do in the entire movie.
Bana plays a man who shares a few tender moments with his son on an isolated Australian ranch, but for the most part he remains distant and detached. He rarely smiles, his face carved with worry. His wife returns from hospitalization in a psychiatric institution but doesn't seem improved. She shows affection periodically, but is never consistent in her actions, and spends most of her screen time smoking and staring into space despondently. The movie never explains why she is so disaffected, but it has obviously taken its toll on Bana, who tries to be a good father and husband, but is slowly tortured by her impulsiveness and self-absorbed immaturity. When she has a baby, she ignores its wailing and would rather sit in a trance-like state than feed it. In many ways, the boy is the parent. He survives a marathon of tragedies that would crush most children's psyches.
Among the horrors visited upon this boy are: watching a man exterminating chickens with a shovel because they are diseased, being pummeled by his father because he lied, watching his mother get savagely beaten by a man who can no longer stand her uncaring behavior, having to stay with his mother and try to keep her awake after she overdoses on pills, and almost getting an axe buried in his skull when his father dissociates in a furious rampage and doesn't recognize him. Many moments are brutally honest. One favorite is when the boy gets angry at his father for infidelity and blasts music in the shed, trying to use frantic dancing to show defiance. Later he will try to surface feelings of joy with the music, but finds he cannot. Another moment is when his mother comes to visit and he rebukes her in a restaurant. The boy has grown weary of her childishness and tells a professor at school that he does not want contact with her anymore.
The film does not gloss over the emotional scars inflicted on the boy. A scene at the end involving a rifle shows that he is teetering on the edge of a nervous breakdown. The movie begins and ends with a simple ritual that provides a flicker of hope for the future. That the boy survives and succeeds in life is a testament to the strength of a child who hasn't reached adulthood yet and is willing to believe that anything can get better with time.
Rating:  -
I had heard good and bad on this...but being that it's Eric Bana, I had to trust my gut instinct....glad I did. It was heartwarming and touching and makes a welcome addition to my Eric Bana collection...dare I say sigh, when it comes to Eric...okay I did. Enjoy.
Rating: -
I like movies like this because it shows that no matter how rough or disadvantaged a child's upbringing may be, he or she can overcome it to become a success or even just a reliable citizen. There could hardly be a more mixed up life than that had by little Raimond. This is the story of what he went through growing up with two - or should I say three or four - mixed-up parents.
There are lots of sexual situations, beatings, and bad language so this movie isn't for children. A responsible non-parent might show it to a teenager who is in the same situation as Raimond and then point out how he was able to overcome his upbringing; but, they should be prepared to mentor the teen as well.
Rating: -
Yesterday, we watched the DVD of Romulus, My Father, which follows Raimond Gaita's memoir of his early life with his father scrupulously. On the way back to Dubai in 2003, I had come across philosopher Gaita's The Philosopher's Dog. I bought it, read it and passed it on to our philosopher son Jeremy (The Ecological Life) to read. Shortly after, Jeremy picked up Gaita's Romulus, My Father, and returned the favor by passing it on to me to read. I found it exceptionally well written and deeply moving.
Let me start by saying that the movie of Romulus, My Father is exquisitely filmed. It's all light and shadows, sepia browns and yellows in the back country of Australia, the movie analogue of those great photographs of the Depression by Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans. The acting, too, is first rate. Eric Bana (Munich) is a perfect choice for the father, conveying emotion even when still and displaying the essential gravity and weight of Gaita's working class father plays the father. ALL the actors are first rate. The story tells of young Rai's growing up caught between a strong, almost Old Testament father and an emotionally and mentally troubled mother who drifts in and out of the family wreaking havoc wherever she lands. Another virtue of the film is the dramatic use of stillness, which gives the viewer time to let his or her feelings grow of their own accord. The movie won several awards in Australia but received almost no critical notice in this country. That's a shame because it's really good.
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