Reviews

This movie is aptly named - it has about as much incisiveness as a bar of preheated butter, and it flits from scene to scene with a real lack of continuity. It's very pretty, but it's a failure at interweaving the chaotic politics of the era with the daily life of the Galician townspeople. It has every stock figure from every sentimentalized coming-of-age film ever made: the saintly, Mr. Chipps-like teacher, the young boy who he brings out of his shell (played by one of the more annoying child actors you'll encounter), the brutalized drunken lout who presages the coming of Falangist brutality by brutally killing his lover's dog....The film is highly episodic and never gets around to knitting together the various characters who appear from time to time. This doesn't come close to capturing the tremendous chasms in Spanish society, and the social and political dynamics that led to the drama and brutality of the Spanish Civil War.