Illuminata
List Price:
Our Price: $3.45
You Save: $11.53 (77%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $3.43 (click here)
Category: DVD
See more DVD releases
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
DVD Cover Information
Actor: Fernando Bolles, Henri Behar, Katherine Borowitz, Leo Bassi, Maurizio BenazzoDVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround; English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround
Format: Digital Video Transfer, DVD, Full Screen, Letterboxed, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 119 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2001-02-20
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Live / Artisan
Movie Reviews of Illuminata
Movie Review: A Movie With A Thesis
Summary: 5 Stars
I am a fan of challenging visual media, I will cite the Aeon Flux shorts, The Seventh Seal, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon as examples of works produced by artists who pour their hearts out to get a complex idea across in a way that can be felt, not just told.
I believe that John Turturro is trying to express the idea that art, to function well, must be inseparable from life. Starting from this thesis, all of the choices he has made in Illuminata change from "incompetent" or "confusing" to parts of a whole that function collectively to change a single idea into a palpable work of art.
For example, it was noted that the audience sometimes can't tell when actors are speaking lines from the play and when they are actually speaking to each other. Far from a blunder, this ambiguity was essential to the message of the film, a physical representation of its thesis.
Though it is present from the film's very first scene, the idea of art/life ambiguity is manifested most clearly during the scene outside the theater in which Dominique and Rachel are simultaneously running their lines and working out the details of Tuccio's alleged betrayal. Their crisis of realities is made physical for the audience by the fact that the characters in the scene can not, in that moment, tell whether they are speaking to each other in character or in real life. The audince must struggle to follow their conversation just as the characters are struggling to separate the real from the artificial.
In an excellent example of dramatic unity, this ambiguity then fuels the film's resolution, in which Tuccio and Rachel fight and are then reunited by the speech on the merits of imperfect love. This speech ultimately provides the missing ending for Tuccio's play, but, since it has never been spoken before the fight, the viewer is never sure if Rachel spoke it spontaneously as part of their real-life fight, or if she was quoting something Tuccio had written for the play. This ambiguity, I believe, is exactly as intended. Because the film is about the merging of art and life, the audience, in order to feel them unite, must not be sure where art ends and life begins.
I realize that this is not a film for everyone; however, if you enjoy films that bear deep analysis and that still evoke wonder, please add it to your library.
Summary of Illuminata
John Turturro's homage to the world of theatrical make-believe may fall short of the shining beacons of this Shakespearean genre--Ingmar Bergman's Fanny and Alexander and Jean Renoir's The Golden Coach, for two--but his Illuminata casts considerable sweetness and light of its own. Mostly set in a teeming warren of private and performance spaces within a turn-of-the-century theater, the film follows the fluctuating fortunes of playwright Tuccio (Turturro), his lover-muse-leading lady (Katherine Borowitz, Turturro's offscreen wife), and their colorful company: Rufus Sewell and Georgina Cates, youthful, less wise projections of playwright and muse; Ben Gazzara as a grizzled old thespian forgetful of the line between reality and performance; Bill Irwin as the naive bit player who catches the hungry eye of Christopher Walken's deliciously over-the-top, acid-tongued critic; Susan Sarandon as a calculatingly seductive diva fighting her age; and commedia dell'arte types Aida Turturro and Leo Bassi. Tuccio's dying to get his play on the boards, but as theater owners Beverly D'Angelo (she of the endearing overbite) and Donal McCann (late star of Irish cinema, and of John Huston's The Dead) reasonably point out, his delicate fantasy about love and illusion lacks an ending. Zigzagging through Midsummer Night's Dream misunderstandings and misalliances, slipping seamlessly from mundane into artifice and back again, Illuminata wends its way toward Tuccio's bittersweet denouement. In Mac, his directorial debut, Turturro paid heartfelt tribute to his own blue-collar dad; this sophomore effort (cowritten with friend and fellow director Brandon Cole) glows with warm affection for audiences, actors, and those who dream their plays. --Kathleen MurphySimilar DVD Movies
The Very Thought of YouBuena Vista Home Video; Release date: 1999-12-14; Published: 1999-12-01; DVD
Best price: $4.52
Price in other shops:
She CreatureShe; Release date: 2002-04-02; DVD
Best price: $4.49
Price in other shops:
The WoodlandersBuena Vista Home Video; Release date: 2012-01-06; DVD
Best price: $19.92
Price in other shops:
Tristan and Isolde (Widescreen Edition)Fox; Release date: 2006-04-25; DVD
Best price: $3.57
Price in other shops:
The Eleventh HourWarner; Release date: 2011-03-29; DVD
Best price: $48.35
Price in other shops:
VinyanBEART,EMMANUELLE; Release date: 2009-04-07; DVD
Best price: $2.69
Price in other shops:
Romance & CigarettesSony; Release date: 2008-02-12; Published: 2008-02-01; DVD
Best price: $3.11
Price in other shops:
The Last King - The Power and the Passion of Charles IIA&E; Release date: 2004-04-27; DVD
Best price: $6.46
Price in other shops:
Shakespeare RetoldWHV; Release date: 2007-07-24; DVD
Best price: $17.98
Price in other shops:
Dangerous BeautySEWELL,RUFUS; Release date: 1998-10-27; DVD
Best price: $24.68