Red Like the Sky

Occasionally, it is salutary to watch something extraordinary achieved by ordinary people to temporarily forget about the tumultuous world where we live in presently, and Italian filmmaker Cristiano Bortone's third feature film RED LIKE THE SKY is the rightly heartening crowd-pleaser saving its faintly cutesy enactment.

The film is inspired by the true story of Mirco Mencacci (Capriotti), a boy living in a sun-drenched Toscana with his parents in the 70s, whose carefree life is abruptly deprived by an accident and he is afflicted with the irreversible condition of losing his sight (the most egregious renunciation should be meted out to his parents, what kind of a parent would keep a loaded rifle hanging in their home within the reach of a child?), and according to the law, he must be sent to a Catholic school for blind kids.

The most endearing moments are always those with the real blind kids, who play Mirco's fellow schoolmates and among those, there is Felice (a cherubic Gullì), who will become Mirco's best friend. And there is a sighted girl too, Francesca (Maturanza), takes the onus as the guiding light so that they sneak out of the school in one night to listen to a movie in the local cinema and predictably develops a puppy love with Mirco. The leitmotif here is to rebel against the oppressive administration influenced by religious clout, and to embrace life through one's unique talent, for Mirco and co. is to record a fairy tale exclusively through sound and voice, an audio book graced with ingenious recordings of sound effects, that is Mirco's forte and indeed he would become a film sound mixer/editor in the future, working in Fausto Brizzi's NIGHT BEFORE THE EXAMS (2006).

Compared with Bortone's tender circumspection and undivided concentration on the children players, the film's adult wrangle, namely a sage teacher Don Giulio (Sassanelli) versus the hidebound school director (Mozzato) is squarely delivered with rigid harangue deplete of any flair and its broader social milieu is considerably skimped, to say less of its Communist undertone which an Italian might presume is what the title refers to.

A sympathetic piece of Bildungsroman most extraordinarily accomplished by a sensitive leading performance from the assumedly blind actor Luca Capriotti, the film is his only acting credit as yet. Not intending to take any shine off Bortone and his team's scrupulous dedication in coordinating a cast chiefly composed of non-professional blind kids, it is a story has an immanent and affecting strength to be hailed and proselytized universally, a windfall for any visionary raconteur.

This is a story about a group of blind children, before didn't watch the movie, single is a generalization of the word, maybe we can guess this is an old story, read later, I want to say is, this is a department moved your movie. Although it is nothing new, but with a special technique to explain. Let us to understand and know the story of the different people in different world, For a healthy person, we always live with our eyes. When our world loses its eyes and light, and only has endless darkness, what kind of world will it be? This film tells the story of a group of children in such a strange world that we cannot guess

That could be another deep drama movie (my stupid expectation, I confess).

It is so magic that I cried like a baby, but it was due the beauty of those fantastic souls that really had changed my "vision" ironically.

It make me think about the colors and predicates that we create and reproduce all the time, as our point of view, like our stigmas about the black or white, true or false, as if there's no gray out there and how we may under estimate the potential of the others.

I'm sure that I must watch this movie again sometime later to keep out of the track of the shepherds that fogs my vision :-)

Though this film was made in 2006, it possesses a tone far more antiquated. As if it were filmed in the nineties.

One of my greatest fears in life is to lose my sight and hearing, which, as someone who already suffers from color blindness and hearing loss, I live with a limited use of these faculties...

Here, the children live with my fears. "Rosso come il cielo" is a film truly underrated. Especially with its narrative style that pays homage to Balkan and Iranian cinema, and the magnificent musical scores of Ezio Bosso accompanying the marvelous cinematography of Vladan Radovic.

This small but grand film, adapted from the memoirs of Italian sound designer Mirco Mencacci, is a cinematic work that anyone who wishes to question their capacity for empathy should watch.