Reviews

As a lover of Coppola's Great films, I'll watch anything he does, no matter how many misfires he produces. And I hate to admit it, but for me, Tetro was a complete misfire. I'm actually surprised at all the strong reviews and I wonder if people saw the same movie as me.

The film's Art House all the way. Black and white, staged like a play, BIG Greek and literary themes driving the story, to obvious devices like a cat named "Problema", a man in a cast until his brother arrives, symbolically driving the character arcs and story.

Coppola obvious loves theater. The film is filmed with theater pieces throughout the storyline and the movie itself feels like it belonged on stage.

This is all good if it works, but it didn't. The film was redundant, the characters cliché's, the dialogue uninteresting....and the acting of the two male leads was completely undramatic. Nothing against anyone personally, but to me, Vincent Gallo is just not a good actor. He's personae. Coppola failed because he cast an actor who looks and feels exactly like the self-indulgent "artist" that Coppola was trying to characterize in Tetro. The result was that there was nothing fresh in this film, especially in the characters. (The lead actress was strong, and she overshadowed both the men on screen.) I think Coppola is rediscovering his craft, and it's starting with story telling. The film is extremely ambitious as it tries to tackle the father and son dynamic for the 1000th time in literary history. It's hard to forgive, or miss, sub-par and redundant writing in this genre and Coppola unfortunately brought nothing fresh to the literary table. What he did bring fresh, if anything, was art house to the American public, but unfortunately the film isn't strong enough to break into mainstream America. Not even close. The film attempts to be serious and viewers who see Coppola's name over a black and white dramatic piece about fathers and sons will pretense a masterpiece...just because. But it's not a masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination.

Imagine the best of American black and white films that were either derived from the stage or a homage to plays and classical dramatic writing. Tetro could be A Streetcar Named Desire if it worked. But it's not even close. Streetcar had acting, it had characters, it had fresh dialogue, it had real drama. Nothing in Tetro could measure to these standards - not even the self-conscious cinematography. The main male actors bring nothing to life in this film because they don't know how to and because the writing gets in the way. Anyone who thinks this film is great, please go back and watch these movies and remember what great character driven dramatic cinema should be. Let's not reward on intention, but on execution.

Coppola should have rewritten this script for another year before he filmed it and recast it with serious actors (V Gallo doesn't even read scripts he receives, he just reads his parts). He would have achieved something much better than what he did here.

Everyone bitches about the studio system, but, I hate to say it, Coppola was at his best when he worked with the talent the studio system affords and attracts.

As a human being, good for him that he can make films on his own terms, all the power to him. But, go deeper next time Francis and perfect your script before you shoot it and find real actors to pull it off.