Tre Fratelli (1981)

Last night, after taking down my Christmas tree, I watched Tre Fratelli, a 1981 Italian film directed by Francesco Rosi. The English title is Three Brothers. It was nominated for an Academy Award in the category of Best Foreign Picture, but lost to the Hungarian Mephisto. It is very loosely based on a short story called "The Third Son" by Russian author Andrei Platonov, although there is only one scene in the film that can be identified in the short story. The rest of the film has been adapted to an Italian setting and the characters are developed to a greater degree.

In Tre Fratelli, three brothers return to their childhood home, a picturesque farmhouse in rural southern Italy, for their mother's funeral. The oldest brother is a judge, the middle brother is religious and works in a correctional institute for boys, and the youngest brother is a factory worker and union organizer. Each is preoccupied with his own sense of justice. The youngest brother has brought along his six year old daughter, who has in mind that she might stay with her grandfather a while since he is now alone. The factory worker has separated from his wife, but doesn't want his father to find out.

The film primarily takes place over a brief period, the day they arrive at the farmhouse, the night they spend there, and the next morning when the funeral takes place. Each brother has an encounter with his past while there and, during the night, a vision of his possible future. The presentation of these experiences is symmetrical in the order of middle, oldest, youngest, youngest, oldest, middle. These experiences are interspersed with scenes of the brothers' father and his granddaughter, and scenes of discussion and debate between the brothers about their different worldviews.

Rather than go into the particularities of each brother's issues, I'll leave them to the potential viewer to discover. But I'll draw attention to one particular flashback, a memory experienced by the brothers' father pertaining to his wedding day. After the marriage, he and his bride go to the beach. As she sits sifting sand through her fingers she discovers that her wedding ring has fallen off. Anxiously they search for it, and the husband runs off to a nearby house. He returns with a large sifter through which they begin to throw handfuls of sand. Within moments they find the ring. Later at the end of the film, after the mother's funeral, the father goes into his room, sees her wedding ring lying on the dresser and puts it on his ring finger, next to his own.

Tre Fratelli is a lovely film that is somehow both simple and complex. It also features beautiful scenery and settings within ancient Italian architecture (although I was unable to find any decent screenshots depicting the scenery). This is yet another film about the meaning of home and the ultimate disconnection from a sense of home. The death of a parent seems to be frequent symbol of this disconnection.