A good thing about Italian cinema is that it has never hesitated in showing stories which are about ordinary events happening in the lives of ordinary people.This is something which might displease audiences used to a certain type of idea regarding films as an entertainment medium of the masses primarily meant for the masses.Italian director Mario Martone is one such director who has always made brave films which challenge our common place notions about how narrative devices are crucial in the making of a successful film.This is a brilliant quality of his kind of cinema as evident in iconoclastic films such as "Morte Di Un Matematico Napoletano" and "L'Amore Molesto".What we see in "Teatro Di Guerra" is something quite ordinary which has happened to everyone of us.There is a good mixture of art,politics,theater and war. What makes this film special is the fact that Mario Martone does not pamper his audiences into believing that they would get a first hand view of war in Sarajevo.This is the reason why there are no gruesome war scenes involving senseless bloodshed.One might call it an artistic ruse that Mario Martone has decided to give a low budget feel to his film by filming most of his film indoors.This has really worked wonders as some of the scenes have been so nicely filmed as if the audience is truly watching filmed theater.According to Hollywood cinema standards, "Teatro Di Guerra" should be considered as a slow film.But it would surely not be a handicap for those viewers who are keen on discovering brave films about ordinary people confronting brave issues in life.
6.7Plot summary
A group of actors meet with little money in a unofficial theatre in Naples' Spanish Boroughs. Director's plan is to travel to Sarajevo, still under siege, to stage a classic Eschilus' play about civil war in Tebe. While they rehearse in the theatre cast members come and go and another kind of war goes on every day in nearby streets of old Naples.
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Non conformist Italian director Mario Martone shows cinema as an art form revealing filmed theater.
Theatre politics would have made for a good documentary.
We follow the politics of the theatre when a struggling theatre company rehearses the Aeschylus' play, Seven Against Thebes. They hope to take it on the road to Sarajevo but all odds are against them. A clutter of characters prance around the screen, throwing us in every direction. It soon settles down as we grasp the geography of the character structure and feel for their passion that drives them. In the end, this would have made an interesting documentary.