Cinema: Folk Artistry

KAOS

Luigi Pirandello died 50 years ago this December, but his influence is still palpable in Italian cinema. Recently Marcello Mastroianni has starred in two adaptations, of the novel The Late Mattia Pascal and the play Henry IV. Both movies offer aspects of the basic Pirandello theme, in which the universe is a carrousel whirling off its moral axis, and man's ego is a mask that conceals a gaping void. In their entrancing new film, Paolo and Vittorio Taviani have revived a less familiar Pirandello: the compulsive storyteller, spinning tales about his native Sicily, its stern landscape and elemental passions. Kaos dramatizes...

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