I just watched this movie in the 3rd Spanish Film Festival in London.
Oh goodness, this movie is all over the place.
First the annoying voice over of the main character (Rodrigo) saying all this pompous nonsense, commits a cardinal sin in cinema, trying to explain with words what the director was unable to explain with cinematic language. If I wanted to read a script or a book, I would buy the script or the book. Utterly pointless and annoying to no end.
The relationships between the characters are badly drawn, one fails to see why the granddaughter (Octavia) is so angry with everybody around her, you can draw you own conclusions eventually, but the process of discovery is tiring and uninvolved because it is badly presented: if you want to build so much tension between 2 characters they need to be more often on screen together, not to have just a couple of incidental dialogues.
As for NY audiences not knowing about the conflict in question, well, sorry but any person with basic cultural awareness of the wider world should know about the Spanish Civil War and its most important references (1936, Guernica, General Franco and his fascist credentials, the Catholic Church support of Franco's regime, etc). The references in the movie are enough to understand the context where the characters live and lived, but perhaps the annoying voice-over detracts from this.
Also the scenes of "rebellion" of Octavia are utterly childish, nobody cares, nobody is shocked, which kind of rebellion is that? Octavia, the character after which the movie is named, has barely 2 or 3 scenes to herself, is pretty much ignored during the first half of the movie and all of the sudden she acquires some relative importance out of nowhere. Dismal character development.
Finally the political points made are handled without tact and have the stench of conspiracy theories, and are delivered, of course, by Rodrigo's voice over.
The music (some sacred religious stuff) begins to drill your skull after a while. How many times does the same piece of music need to be played in such a long movie? Numbing.
To be avoided frankly.
Oh goodness, this movie is all over the place.
First the annoying voice over of the main character (Rodrigo) saying all this pompous nonsense, commits a cardinal sin in cinema, trying to explain with words what the director was unable to explain with cinematic language. If I wanted to read a script or a book, I would buy the script or the book. Utterly pointless and annoying to no end.
The relationships between the characters are badly drawn, one fails to see why the granddaughter (Octavia) is so angry with everybody around her, you can draw you own conclusions eventually, but the process of discovery is tiring and uninvolved because it is badly presented: if you want to build so much tension between 2 characters they need to be more often on screen together, not to have just a couple of incidental dialogues.
As for NY audiences not knowing about the conflict in question, well, sorry but any person with basic cultural awareness of the wider world should know about the Spanish Civil War and its most important references (1936, Guernica, General Franco and his fascist credentials, the Catholic Church support of Franco's regime, etc). The references in the movie are enough to understand the context where the characters live and lived, but perhaps the annoying voice-over detracts from this.
Also the scenes of "rebellion" of Octavia are utterly childish, nobody cares, nobody is shocked, which kind of rebellion is that? Octavia, the character after which the movie is named, has barely 2 or 3 scenes to herself, is pretty much ignored during the first half of the movie and all of the sudden she acquires some relative importance out of nowhere. Dismal character development.
Finally the political points made are handled without tact and have the stench of conspiracy theories, and are delivered, of course, by Rodrigo's voice over.
The music (some sacred religious stuff) begins to drill your skull after a while. How many times does the same piece of music need to be played in such a long movie? Numbing.
To be avoided frankly.