cinematic_aficionado A bunch of convicts in a maximum security prison, suddenly face a new challenge: to prepare and stage a William Shakespeare play in-house.Much as for many of them it initially became an excuse to spend more time outside their cells, in the process each of them had to come face to face with their own selves, the issues with one another as well as their fate.On this note, this is an area that this film excels in the sense that this group of people are happy to train to act as anyone else but themselves.To their credit they gave their all but it was not easy as consciousness begun to kick in and the struggles appeared. During this time, they forgot they were convicts, some lifers, but became actors who lived in the time of Caesar.The most profound moments appeared after the end of the play when the inmates stopped pretending they were actors and had to face the reality that heir cell was once more a prison and staring at the ceiling for infinity resumed.For a 76 minute film, it has substantial depth and takes the audience into a journey of forgetfulness, reality and transformation.

okay b This movie was extremely disappointing! Perhaps because I had high expectations after reading about the number awards it had won. I thought there was an obvious opportunity lost to create a richer narrative by delving deeper into the backgrounds of each of the inmates and then relating it back to the play. At the start they introduce each player along with their crimes committed. I was curious to find out what had convinced them to decide to audition for the play in the first place and what participating in play meant to them personally. Though there were hints of this for example when the inmate who plays Brutus has a momentary pause about how a line in the play conjures a memory of an exchange with a friend from his past, this moment is brushed immediately aside and the actors continue to rehearse.Though film depicts the passion of the inmates to excel as players well, the lack of dimension in the overall story made the film very unsatisfying.

Roberto Carboni Six years on from The Lark Farm, Paolo and Vittorio Taviani found in stage productions of the Roman prison inmates Rebibbia energy and the urge to get back behind the camera and make a new film. They wrote and directed and produced within the Roman prison facility and with the same group of actors-prisoners.Only apparently docudrama, but in reality almost entirely representation, Caesar must die tells the staging of "Julius Caesar" by Shakespeare, who are leaving very little overlap between the preparation of the play and the play itself, the express wish to amplify the most painful and intimate adhesion of the detainees to their characters and feelings they carry. The films of the Taviani can undoubtedly convey the strength and passion of surprising interpretations, and is able to find moments of clear staging with a charm that builds on the context, but transcends it. Unfortunately, however, is also weighed down by an idea of ​​cinema out of date and time.The intensity of black and white "Giulio Cesare" acted within the walls of prison, goes limp, in fact, when the Taviani brothers - who, caught between themselves and Bertold Brecht were unwilling or able to give up the script, or embrace moments of pure documentation - they feel heavy and intrusive outside their hand. When they try to break the scene with a background, however artificial and, therefore, artificial. The illusion of reality sought by directors does not take off then ever, and breaks the suspension of disbelief achieved in staging Shakespeare. Worse still surrounds the operation with a sort of condescending paternalism that file the roughness, the personalities, the possibilities.Why show "faking" two prisoners who bicker "really", another unable to take part in the tests because they tried to interview, one imagines the arrival of women in the theater or another that says, reciting, that "by when he met the art cell has become a real prison, "is frankly disturbing and morally objectionable, because it becomes another cage that imprisons artistic protagonists.

Jan Grunow I saw the world premiere of this movie at the Berlinale, where it won the golden bear last night. The movie is not bad, but also not special. The basic idea -real prison inmates play Shakespeares "Julius Caerar"- makes the movie interesting and the impressive acting makes you often forget, what fate those men face and what brought them to prison (murder, mafia-crimes etc). But since you know all that from the promotion already, the movie sometimes just leads up to watching an old Shakespeare-play, which we also already know. Just some philosophic aspects (at the end) and the idea of not showing the actual play, but the criminals only practicing it most of the time, is very entertaining.