DVD Reviews

Tetro – Blu-ray Review

By Jeff Swindoll May 13, 2010, 16:55 GMT

Fresh-faced and naive, 17-year-old Bennie (Alden Ehrenreich) arrives in Buenos Aires to search for his older brother who has been missing for more than a decade. The family had emigrated from Italy to Argentina, but with the great musical success of their father Carlo (Klaus Maria Brandauer), an acclaimed symphony conductor, the family moved from Argentina to New York. When Bennie finds his brother, the volatile and melancholy poet Tetro ...more

Francis Ford Coppola returns to the big screen with a more personal film this go around.  It feels like a smaller, more personal film, and also seems to harken back to the French new wave.  

Bennie (Alden Ehrenreich) is a waiter on a cruise line.  His ship is currently docked for a few days in Buenos Aires.  He decides to look up his older brother Angelo who separated from the family many years ago.  Angelo now goes by the name Tetro (Vincent Gallo) and lives with his girlfriend Miranda (Maribel Verdu). 

Tetro allows Bennie to stay ashore with them, but their relationship is not the one that Bennie was hoping for.  Instead of finding a long lost brother with open arms he finds a misanthropic keeper of secrets.  One who doesn’t want to talk about his past or answer any of the questions that Bennie has. 

Both men may have different mothers, but they live in the shadow of their famous conductor father Carlo Tetrocini (Klaus Maria Brandauer).  When Bennie accidentally finds Tetro’s writings he begins to decipher the reasons behind Tetro’s dark days.  When he adapts them into a play things start to come to a head between Bennie, Tetro, and Miranda but also pull Tetro’s old mentor “Alone” (Carmen Maura) into their orbits.  

Tetro is the latest offering from living legend Francis Ford Coppola.  After a cinematic absence, probably spend in the wine fields of his vineyard, Coppola returned with Youth without Youth in 2007 and followed it with this film.  Tetro has a smaller feel to it that Youth and in that it feels more like a personal film. 

The film is largely in black and white with snatches of color footage.  It concerns an artist and some past events that he’d rather forget.  Unfortunately, the past has a habit of catching up with us and it does to Tetro when his brother comes to stay with him in Buenos Aires.  Even though the film is set in Buenos Aires I thought the film had a French New Wave feel to it, maybe it was the black and white.

It is also the artistic nature of several of the characters in the film that made me think this way as well and the human drama at the core of the film.  There’s also a family secret that doesn’t seem so secret since I figured that one out before the film revealed it. 

Vincent Gallo is certainly surly in the main role, Ehrenreich is a new face and is good, Verdu is also good in the thankless role of putting up with the moody Tetro, and Brandauer is good as the larger-than-life father (also again playing twins as he is made up to be the older brother of Carlo). 

I think I liked this one better than Youth without Youth, but it doesn’t rise to the Godfather or Coppola’s other classics.  

Tetro is presented in a 1080p high definition transfer (2.35:1).  Special features are in high definition and include a commentary with director Francis Ford Coppola and Alden Ehrenreich.  The 8 minute “The Ballet” the use of the dance and the Red Shoes as inspiration in the film.  The 8 minute “Mihai Malaimare, Jr.” is and interview with the cinematographer. 

The 8 minute “REhersal Process” is about that process and Coppola and Gallo’s disagreement on it.  The 9 minute “Osvaldo Golijov” is an interview with the composer.  The 5 minute “La Colifata” is about the radio-show treatment seen in the film.  The 4 minute “Fausta” is a longer, uninterrupted version of the play seen in the film.  The 3 minute “Tetro end credits” are the full credits since the film only features an abbreviated credit sequence.  The disc is also BD-Live enhanced.  

Tetro may be closer to a return to form for Coppola, but it still doesn’t stack up when compared to his older work.  It’s a heck of a lot better than Godfather III though.  Film fans and artist types will certainly get more out of it than your average viewer.  

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