Between L’Avventura and La Dolce Vita, which do you like better? Vita is not in this collection, so I don’t know if I’m straying too far from the task at hand, but I’m curious.

Swords! At Dawn!

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After watching Fists, I had to take a step back and look more closely at what this collection is about. Martin Scorsese commented that:

The Janus Films icon—the black and white image, the lettering, the two faces on the seemingly ancient coin—meant that you were going to see something special, something new, something completely different from anything you’d ever seen before.

So instead of the rant I had initially composed (see below), I should be focusing on what was special, new or completely different from anything ever seen before. At the time of its release, Fists was most assuredly all of this. The portrayal of family dysfunction was harsh and in your face, and its irreverence was more than likely a shock for its initial audience.

And now I’m starting to understand more clearly why the movies in this collection have been chosen and others left out.

However, and whether unfortunately or fortunately, depending on your view, in watching Fists today, there is nothing special, new or completely different that would encourage me to recommend it to anyone else. Instead, I stand by the movies mentioned below. Having the usual hyper-U.S.-centric mindset, they all were special, new and completely different from anything I had ever seen before. (Well, Benigni’s slapstick is quite similar to Steve Martin’s, but the Italian touch was still new to me.)

And today, for a good dose of irreverence, just give me Throw Momma From The Train.

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Original Rant:
If I hadn’t already seen Il Postino and La Vita e Bella, and several other Roberto Benigni movies—if you haven’t already seen Johnny Stecchino or Il Mostro, don’t wait; see them asap for a great fun couple of romps!—I’d pretty much say fooey (the italiano spelling) to all Italian-made films. This one falls down to the bottom of the heap, right alongside La Dolce Vita and L’Avventura, but with a bigger thud. Well, maybe I should watch La Dolce Vita again. If I remember rightly, it has a couple of nifty cars in it, at least.

Going in I immediately thought: “Oh, great, another ITALIAN film.” ***Heavy Sigh*** and the film didn’t start out on a promising note with some guy berating a gal for her stupidity at driving a car. “You do know how to put the car into reverse instead of fourth gear?” Who ARE these people and why do I care?

With a title like “Fists in the Pocket” – I envisioned a snappy crime film with a bunch of hoods holed up in a hideaway after a botched robbery, slowly turning on each other (much like “Reservoir Dogs”) but what we soon get is a story about a dysfunctional family. A VERY dysfunctional family.

When our hero arrives home we find him interacting with his blind mother, his retarded brother, another brother who has “issues” and his VERY hot sister. Oh, I’m thinking to myself, it’s a family drama! Oh boy! Let me pull up a chair and pop in the cyanide pills now.

Instead what follows is the story of a young man and his semi-incestuous relationship with his sister and how he puts it upon himself to wipe out the family so his more normal brother can get married and have a life.

According to the Netflix wrapper (which I did NOT read before I watched the film) the young man suffers from….wait for it…EPILEPSY! So, yeah, golly he’s crazy for sure! Again, we can grasp that the other “slow” brother is a bit on the “slow” side (as he doesn’t say much) and the sister…well, she suffers from continual hotness.

When young epileptic brother helps a kid (Cousin? Nephew? Neighbor?) cheat on changing some grades and then forces the kid into spilling ink all over the grade sheet and then blames the kid for doing it and kicking the kid out of the house (after having him check out his sister – did I say she was really hot?) – we know that the epileptic brother (EB) isn’t playing with a full deck – but at least he seems competent (wants to raise chinchillas and kill ‘em for their fur).

But to better himself the EB takes a driver’s test but fails because of forgetting to use a turn signal. Surely he is a risk to everyone on the road. And those wacky Italians don’t allow someone to get back in and take the test again, they HAVE TO WAIT A MONTH!

Well the EB has an agenda. He wants to get his license so he can kill everyone in the family instead of competent brother (CB) so, yes, CB can live happily ever after. He lies to everyone and says he has his license.

After a fight at the dinner table and some weird shenanigans (like the EB “reading” the paper to his blind mother) he insists on driving the family to his father’s grave so they can have a service. The Hot Sister (HS) refuses after a fight with EB but the CB talks her into it at the insistence of the EB.

Before they leave for the graveyard the EB leaves a note for CB that he’s going to kill them all and that he would like to be cremated.

When the CB finds this out…does he call the police? Does he borrow a neighbor’s car? Does he try to stop them? No. He calls his girlfriend (Lucia) up for some hanky panky. He even confides in her his EB’s plan and still wants to get in her pants.

Though the EB plans to off them all, he gets in a game of showmanship with another car on the road and his HS loves the adrenaline rush and it throws him off his game. Sadly…he doesn’t kill himself off along with the family and the film doesn’t end at the 30 minute mark. No…we have to suffer along some more…

When they return home the CB isn’t all that glad to see the family has returned. And still, the EB isn’t all that excited either. The CB even tells the family what the EB had planned. Showing them the note. Now, you think they would stay far away from him, but instead…they continue to hang with the EB. Especially the HS.

On another drive, though, the EB finally goes through with part of his plan, pushing his blind mother off a cliff to her death. YAY!

Dealing now with the aftermath of this (a wake, people visiting, coffee) the EB confides to his HS that he pushed mommy off the cliff. Thus starting his plan to rid the chaff from the wheat and let his poor, poor, competent brother to marry and live happily in the villa.

When the CB informs the remaining family members that he, indeed, wants to marry but he won’t live there – but in the city – this sends the EB over the edge (I think – I nodded off for a few minutes here and there). The EB then over medicates the Slow Brother (SB) and drowns him in the bath. When the HS finds this out, she confronts the EB but falls down some stairs (I think – see comment about nodding off) and is paralyzed…or…

Now that SHE has become a burden the EB decides to kill her but then he listens to opera, sings along, goes insane and/or has a seizure and dies??? I don’t know. The film sort of ends there.

Fin!

WHAT I LIKED:

Uh… Well, it was creepy. The Netflix wrapper talked of this being a “horror” film and I didn’t get that (maybe because it didn’t have blood and guts). I also liked the subtlety of the relationship between the HS and EB. It’s not fully revealed that they’re in a relationship but there are enough creepy clues (her biting into his shoulder at one point, her excited to see the prostitute that he slept with) that made that aspect of the film interesting.

WHAT I DIDN’T LIKE:

This is the first film of the collection that the cinematography did nothing for me. There’s one great “over the side of the cliff” shot that was pretty well done and the chase along the mountain road was cool. But most of the film is shot in the villa…

I absolutely did not care about any of the characters in the film. They’re all self-absorbed dipshits except for maybe the HS and why she can’t get a job or help out with the family or marry rich or disappear on some island somewhere I just don’t know – and it wasn’t explained (at least maybe I missed it when I nodded off).

The CB’s comments about sleeping with Lucia while the family is probably about to die in a horrible car accident was pretty funny, though.

BOTTOM LINE:

Shrug.

Italians watching this film would know the back story and motivations and the film was made for them. We watch it now and get exactly your response. Its too bad really that some otherwise solid film making is a victim of its own strength and gets so dated.