Tetro is the newest movie from acclaimed writer/director Francis Ford Coppola. A far cry from his 70's masterpieces like The Godfather 1 & 2, Apocalypse Now and The Conversation, it's an intriguing but flawed look at familial relationships.
18 year old Bennie (outstanding newcomer Alden Ehrenrich) hasn't seen his brother Tetro (Vincent Gallo) in years. Tetro disappeared long ago and hasn't been in touch ever since. When Bennie gets a chance to unexpectedly drop in on Tetro and his girlfriend Miranda (Maribel Verdu) he does so hoping to find the reasons behind Tetro's departure and to reestablish a bond that was broken long ago. Tetro's life is a mystery and that's the way he wants to keep it. It's up to Bennie to find out what he wants to know without upsetting his volatile brother too much.
Coppola the director is in fine form throughout the movie. The camerawork is exquisite with numerous beautiful and inventive shots scattered throughout the movie. The entire film is wonderful to look at, from simple inside areas to large pans of the Buenos Aries landscape. Unfortunately Coppola's work as a writer is much more of a letdown. While the characters are all well rounded and fully realized, there is just no real emotional connection to any of them. Tetro's mysteriousness is much more of a turn off than it is intriguing and it's unclear what really makes others so drawn to him. The movie also goes on for far too long, 2 hours and 10 minutes is just too much time for about an hours worth of story. Add in the character development and the movie would have worked far better at an hour and a half.
The performances are uniformly excellent. Gallo is not one of my favorite actors by any means and I found his performance to be hit and miss but with what he's given I thought he was fine. The real star is Uhrenreich, he portays wide eyed and innocent very well but also goes to darker places with great effectiveness. It's easy to see why his performance is compared to a young DiCaprio (plus they really do look alike). The rest of the supporting cast is excellent as well.
Much like the movie the blu-ray is technically amazing. The black and white scenes looks fantastic. Blacks are deep and powerful yet easily distinguishable between background and foreground things like hair and clothing. There is no bleeding at any point. The small amount of scenes in color look fantastic as well but they are heightened beyond realistic levels. Detail is always superb and while there is a light grain visible at almost all times, it is never distracting. For a dialogue driven move Tetro packs a pretty powerful audio punch. The jazz and classical compositions that make up the soundtrack sound great. They are very full and impactful. There is not a lot in the way of surround use but when it does happen directionality is spot on and it sounds very natural. Dialogue is always clear and I did not have to adjust the volume at all during viewing.
There's a lot of really good things about Tetro - mostly falling on the technical side - and it's Coppola's best movie in quite a while but the lack of emotional involvement and the bloated length hold it back significantly. It's probably still worth seeing to see a great director at work but I doubt anyone will be blown away with it.
Ratings:
Movie: 3/5
Blu-ray: 4.5/5
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