Besieged (1999)

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

This film is a little thin in many respects. It is beautifully shot, and has some potentially interesting characters, but the remained quite flat. I think that, on occasion, were given a clue as to what was driving the lives of the characters. In particular, we did get to see some internal struggle developing after Shandurai (Thandie Newton) learns her husband is not lost and is returning to her life... well after she has recovered from his loss. I had not seen Thandie Newton before, but I will be looking the rental shelves to see if I can find some of her other work. While it is politically incorrect to judge a book by its cover, I must say that she has just rocketed past a long list of my personal picks for the most beautiful woman on the planet.Despite any flaws the critiques may choose to expose, I liked this film very much and am absolutely over the moon with Ms. Newton.

Very few times do I see movies that leave me with no emotion other than boredom. This is one of those few movies. I don't recall seeing any of Berdolucci's earlier work, but he possesses a knack for assembling images. He's definitely a fine visual artist, and I felt some of the sets were beautiful, as well as the music. Unfortunately, the script might as well have been a series of blank pages. I'm sure many will praise the film because of its lack of dialogue, and how artful that is since so many modern films depend too much on dialogue. Well, that may be true, but no dialogue alone doesn't make a movie work. "In the Bedroom" contained long scenes with no dialogue, but the silent images helped tell the story, and the brilliant facial expressions by both Tom Wilkinson and Sissy Spacek gave the audience great insight into how they were feeling. I'm not bashing the actors in this movie, and Thandie Newton and David Thewlis are both genuinely talented, but they're not given much to work with. The story contains very little conflict. At times the love affair between Newton and Thewlis seems to be forgotten, and the whole affair itself contains no passion. You know a movie's awful when it has NO effect on you. It didn't make me angry, it didn't annoy me, it didn't repulse me, it did nothing! And even at 90 minutes, it felt like a miniseries! My score: 2 (out of 10)

Besieged(1998) is a disappointing love story that fails to gain any momentum. The director did much impressive films in the 1970s with The Conformist(1970), Last Tango in Paris(1972), and 1900(1976). The direction is very stale. I wished that the director had done this movie with the same daring apporach he used on Last Tango in Paris(1972). Thandie Newton does alright in the lead role. David Thewis comes close to matching the emotional performance of Marlon Brando in LTIP. The love scenes are tame and without any physical or emotional involvement. Besieged(1998) is indictative of the decade of the 1990s when the style of daring filmmaking is out and the style of making films to please people is in.

BESIEGED (1998)-- Grade: B+WARNING: YOU MAY FIND SOME SPOILERS AHEADWhat a beautiful film! Only a master as Bertolucci could capture the true essence of that story. It's a simple story of two lost souls, whose lives are like an order of facts, any of them very remarkable. A story of love, mystery, music, past memories... OR NOT? A simple story... OR NOT?It's really difficult to define BESIEGED in words, as much as it's difficult to know what is the centerpiece of other peculiar art-house films (LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD, for example), but this doesn't take its beauty. It's an artistic film, not very recommended if you are looking for pure entertainment, but a must see if you want to think. The story revolves around the strange relationship between Shandurai, an African refugee whose husband is in jail, and Mr. Kinsky, the pianist for whom she works in Rome, in order to have a place to live and money to pay her medicine school. They seem quite distant from each other and talk very little, but he starts to send her flowers, bottles of champagne, while she suffers with constant nightmares involving her past in Africa and one local inhabitant who sings typical songs. One day Mr. Kinsky says what Shandurai already seems to know: he loves her. From then on, it's better to tell nothing more. For our luck, they don't discuss their relationship as in the American cinema, but things happen, that will make them get closer, even if they don't know that.BESIEGED can be interpreted superficially, but of course this is not the right way. Everyone should take his/her own conclusions. The end is the epitome of everything: what if he didn't do what she thought he did, and that was just an excuse for what follows? The last 5 minutes will make you think and will enchant you. The letter, the "abrupt" conclusion (in a good way)... "Mr. Kinsky, I love you"It's delightful to see how Bertolucci can still have ideas. After a failure with STEALING BEAUTY, a film that had no beauty indeed, he redeems himself with BESIEGED, a small, but wonderful artistic picture. It's a silent film, with few dialogues, not many characters, but beautifully filmed, with a well told, magic, bittersweet story that is not only about love. It's about our inside feelings, the things that we don't know how to express. Or not! As I said, the film has a peculiar mystery. Is Mr. Kinsky selling his paintings and even his piano for the reason we think he is? We think we know, Shandurai thinks she knows, but nobody of us knows for sure. What about her nightmares, the African singer, Mr. Kinsky's picture on a wall in one of her dreams (see that he is already on her mind)?With very effective performances by Thandie Newton and David Thewlis, BESIEGED will not be among classics and masterpieces, but it is a small and peculiar surprise came from the mind of a master as Bertolucci. A wonderful film!Note: I can't understand the one star Roger Ebert gave for BESIEGED. I know he may be the best film critic of the US, but I can't totally trust in a person that gives 3 and 1/2 stars for THE PERFECT STORM.