Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6369 in DVD
• Released on: 2008-08-11
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Format: PAL
• Original language: Italian
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 102 minutes

Synopsis
Growing up in small-town Italy during the '60s and '70s, brothers Accio (Elio Germano) and Manrico (Riccardo Scamarcio) embody and celebrate opposing political stances, but share an impassioned love of the same woman that threatens to drive them to blows. Director Daniele Luchetti's political comedy MY BROTHER IS AN ONLY CHILD observes the brothers over the course of 15 years, against the ever-shifting backdrop of tumultuous Italian sociopolitical history. During that time span, the siblings' loyalties will fluctuate; they will endure arguments and quarrels, and find themselves separated by the ravages of time and circumstance and reunited magnetically by the wisdom of age. In time, they will come to a firmer and clearer understanding of not only the differences but the similarities that they harbour.

Customer Reviews

Happy times-sad times...Lost generations
The film is a lively portrayal of life in the Italian countryside in the 1960's. Benassi family is a typical working class fmaily with two sons and one daughter.While the father is a factory worker the family struggles to make ends meet. The small child gets kicked out of seminar school, while the big brother is fast organizing a union in the factory which he just entered. In the boiling cauldron of the 1960's political arena the youths get active in radical left and right wing organizations.

The growing up of a young man is showed beautifully in the film. His first days in school, his first love, first fight, friends and foes. The politically important place of the university in the 1960's left wing movement is mentioned in the film as well as far right followers of the Mussolini's fascist movement.Also mentioned in the film is the ordinary people's desire to have a decent life i.e living in better housing.

The ending of the film is somewhat saddening and wrong conclusions can be drawn from it: When you are young it is natural that you are engaged in politics but when you grow old and take responsibilities you should retire from radical views. You should not question the system and try to survive. Or else...you can be shot at by the police in the broad daylight, you can be jailed and your child can be a virtual orphan etc. I do not agree. These things can happen and did happen but they should not have happened to those who seek their rights for better days in the future.

Devolution begins at Home
Mio fratello è figlio unico portrays the lives of the Benassi family in the 60's and 70's. 15 years of 2 brothers at once diverse but very similar fly past in this inspiring film. Some of the film's dilalog is based on conversations the director Daniele Luchetti had with fascists around Rome. The film follows in the footsteps of the neo-ralism school of Vittorio de Sicca.

Trapped in a seeminlgy endless wait for a new council house, Accio joins a seminary, initially destined to become a priest he soon develops other 'revolutionary' tendencies and decides to go back home. There he befriends by a local market trader with extreme right wing tendencies. The film then goes one to show the intertwining lives of the brothers; first Manrico gets a job in the local factory, becomes a union leader, and falls in love with Francesca - then Accio meets Francesca... and from there on matters taken their way in unforeseen ways.

Witty scenes and impeccable acting makes this a fantastic dialogue piece on our not so distant past. Not to mention some of the nostalgic popular music from Europe's 'revolutionary' era.

Poignant and heartbreaking
Casting its spread over a slice of Italian history, it takes the weight of political ideas that dominated Italy in the 60s and 70s, brings them to head, and subtly layers it with the story of a family, where the lightness of being contrasts the turns their lives are taking in the politics driving them.

It also stands as a brilliant metaphor for how ideologies give the common man the pass by, and become an end to themselves.

Beautifully shot, and some fantastic acting perhaps make this the harbinger of the much touted italian renaissance that was heralded by Il Divo and Gomorrah.