A man attends by pure chance the rehearsals of a theatrical piece inspiring himself for his new work. For him, this show takes the form of a painting within another painting like a kaleidoscope that mixes life with theatre, writing with literature, actors with ordinary people. The disarming strangeness with which the amateur actors try to keep the theater group together and complete the show, inspires this witness to write his new work to which he gives the title "Six characters in search of an author" by Pirandello who invites the actors at first unaware of such empirical foundation. Maria Pia.

The film suffers from a common trope of movies where an actor is placed alongside a comedian: the former is put on a pedestal, like a godlike perfect being, and the latter is just a comic relief. The two worlds of Luigi Pirandello and the morticians are so strongly divided in tone that I imagine they shot all the expensive scenes with Toni Servillo in a couple of days, then edited them in the movie in an attempt to pretend all the characters lived in the same world.

But, after a first act of more or less funny jokes, the movie finally explodes in a second act that surprised me in many ways, showing that the until that point pointless series of events is actually aiming somewhere. The movie, in the end, shows a genuine love for theater and Pirandello's work, and even if it is an imperfect movie it perfectly serves as a reminder of how great his work is. I left the theater happy.

I'll start the review saying that I'm Sicilian, and by telling you this I'm implying that i understood all the dialogues without the aid of the subtitles. This fact helped me enjoy the movie way more than any other italian watcher because dialogues are really fast and easy to miss if you just follow the subtitles.

Even with this little flaw, Roberto Andò and his staff did a great job in portraying the never written Luigi Pirandello's tragicomedy. In my eyes, the ambitious work was well displayed, with a good pace, beginning with a usual incipit and becoming more and more twisted with time, making you question if what you saw was actually reality or the story ideated by Luigi Pirandello's allucinated mind. In some way, the movie, was like a remake of "6 personaggi in cerca d'autore", a work which was acclaimed and heavily criticized at the same time, just as this movie. One recurrent theme was the "comedy inside the comedy" concept, the grotesque overcharacterization of the protagonists (both of this movie and "6 personaggi in cerca d'autore") and the subtle realism seeming fiabesque, almost "unreal".

Ficarra and Picone (partnered with Servillo) gave us one of the best, if not THE BEST, performance I've ever seen from them. They were simply THE FILM. Tony as usual did a great job, but I'm still flabbergasted by the comic duo.

What makes the film worth the watch, though, is the finale, in which all the movie takes on meaning.

The final psycological cliff-hanger in wich you question the entire film, and leaves you with a Nolan's "Inception" bittersweet taste in your mouth was a nice ending.

Was the first part real? Or was it all the fruit of Luigi's mental breakdown?

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SCORECARD

In a range from 1 to 5, i'll give a value to each entry written below. The final mark will be the weighted sum of each fraction:

Subject (2.5) = 3/5 Development of the Subject (1.5) = 1/5 Direction/Screenplay (2) = 4/5 Attention (1) = 1/5 Recitation (1.5) = 4/5 Musical Score (0.5) = 2/5

Final Mark: (2.5 x 5/5) + (1.5 x 5/5) + (2 x 3/5) + (1 x 4/5) + (1.5 x 5/5) + (0.5 x 3/5) = 7.8

I give 8 cos i liked the film.