Mediterraneo
Director: Gabriele Salvatores
Distributed by: Miramax Films
Released: January 1991
Country: Italy
When I was 12 or so, in the late 70’s, I won First
Prize in a local archery contest. It was
a summer day-camp thing, and I represented my school camp in the contest,
facing all opposition from the several other school camps in the area. As reward, they gave me a gift certificate for
a sundae at Dairy Queen. Going into the
contest, I was skeptical I would do very well—I knew how to hold the bow and
sometimes was even able to hit the target.
But surprisingly, I was able to bring home The Banana Split because when it came
time for the big match, it turned out the only other competitor was an 8-year-old
kid who had never tried archery before. I
beat him so bad I bet he went home crying for his mommy.
I haven’t seen any of the other entries for Best Foreign Film in 1991, but my guess is they were not unlike that 8-year-old boy. Because the winner, Mediterrano, is about as good a movie as I was an archer.
I haven’t seen any of the other entries for Best Foreign Film in 1991, but my guess is they were not unlike that 8-year-old boy. Because the winner, Mediterrano, is about as good a movie as I was an archer.
 |
| The Italian sailors. They're zany screw ups. |
The film is about a group of screw-up Italian sailors
during early World War II. Their ship
gets sunk and they end up on a Greek island that is seemingly abandoned. They lose radio contact and are stuck in this
beautiful little town in the Mediterranean Sea.
The guys search the island and gradually find that the town is not at
all abandoned after all, but with most of the men of fighting age off to war, the the residents had all just been hiding out.
The sailors aren’t really sure what more they can do but hang tight and
wait for help.
Unlike Gilligan’s group or Tom Hanks in Castaway, the Italian sailors don’t see
the urgency of getting rescued. The
townspeople are welcoming, and after a while, most of the Italians like the idea of
just staying put rather than fighting again for Mussolini. There is a church in need of repair, kids
that need soccer coaches, and most importantly, pretty single women needing attention, including a prostitute
with a heart of gold. The question is,
what will they do when they learn Italy is no longer fighting the Allies? Will they stay or go back to the land where
they belong?
 |
| War or sex-starved Greek girls: Which will they choose? |
Mediterreano
is technically an anti-war film, pointing to the fact that sitting around
having Greek food and Greek women is a whole hell of a lot more fun than shooting
at people and getting shot at. Profound stuff. The characters were supposed to
be comical/zany, I suppose, but I found them all to be a bore. The movie ends with an unnecessary
flash forward to see what our chums are up to many years later, but by that
time, I was completely uninterested in them. If
the movie was trying to make some point about the futility of war, it missed
the mark way worse than my 8-year-old archery opponent did.
The
Title: The Italians
took the word “Mediterranean,” as in the Mediterranean Sea, and Italian-ized it
by taking the “an” off and adding an “o” at the end. Did you need me to tell you that?
 |
| The prettiest girl on Tom Hanks' island |
The
Culture: Perhaps the
one positive thing about this movie is the attractiveness of rural Greek life. The scenery and the thought of doing nothing
on a Greek island doesn’t seem too shabby.
Agenda
Danger: This one fails
if it has an agenda. Obviously, the
Italians at the beginning of the war were the bad guys, so them taking a few
years of the war off seems like a plus.
Best
Picture that year: Silence
of the Lambs
Rating: Skip this movie and go
have yourself a banana split.
