Reviews

Vitus

Slips toward mediocrity

By PETER KEOUGH | July 24, 2007

2.5 Stars

VIDEO: Watch the trailer for Vitus.

Even without looking up the list of last year’s Best Foreign Language Oscar nominees, an astute viewer could guess that Swiss veteran director Fredi M. Murer’s Vitus would be on it. A cute and exceptional little boy, a lovable old geezer — you don’t have to be Pauline Kael to realize this formula is a winner. The cute kid of the title is the ultimate prodigy: at six he looks up words like “paradoxical,” scares fellow kindergarteners with tales of global warming, and warms up on the keyboard with Franz Liszt. No wonder that all the other kids hate him, or that Vitus ponders whether mediocrity and conformity might be preferable. That’s the direction the movie itself goes in, abandoning the issues it raises, and turning our hero into the kind of wise guy who will go over well in the Hollywood version. Real-life piano whiz Teo Gheorghiu adds a feral note to the older Vitus, and when it comes to geezers, you can’t beat Bruno Ganz. Just watching him dance with a bucket is worth all the clichés.

Related: A dying art?, Review: Prince of Persia, Devine DVDs, More

Topics: Reviews , Pauline Kael, Franz Liszt, Bruno Ganz

| More

Most Popular

The Current Issue

Table of Contents

Cover Archive

Masthead | Authors | Contact us

Blogs

Where To Follow Me
Talking Politics | March 24, 2013 at 11:09 AM

Mo Takes His Turn
March 21, 2013 at 12:59 PM

[Q&A] KMFDM's Sascha Konietzko on art, Columbine and having balls
On The Download | March 18, 2013 at 3:22 PM

See this film series: The Belmont World Film Series @ Studio Cinema in Belmont
Outside The Frame | March 18, 2013 at 11:00 AM

See this film: This is Spinal Tap [with post-film talk by expert from Acoustical Society of America] @ the Coolidge
March 17, 2013 at 12:00 PM

ARTICLES BY PETER KEOUGH

BUFFET DINING: THE 15TH BOSTON UNDERGROUND FILM FESTIVAL | March 19, 2013
"Copraphagy" is a key word at this year's Boston Underground Film Festival at the Brattle.

REVIEW: GINGER & ROSA | March 19, 2013
Sally Potter likes to mess around with form and narrative.

UNDERGROUND CINEMA: THE 12TH BOSTON TURKISH FILM FESTIVAL | March 12, 2013
This year's Boston Turkish Film Festival includes works in which directors ponder the relationships between the secular and the religious, between men and women, and between destiny and identity.

REVIEW: A GLIMPSE INSIDE THE MIND OF CHARLES SWAN III | March 12, 2013
In Roman Coppola's sophomoric second feature (his 2001 debut CQ was promising), Charlie Sheen shows restraint as the titular asshole, a dissolute ad designer and solipsistic whiner who's mooning over the loss of his latest love.

REVIEW: UPSIDE DOWN | March 14, 2013
Had Ed Wood Jr. directed Fritz Lang's Metropolis , he couldn't have achieved the earnest dopiness of Juan Solanas's sci-fi allegory — nor the striking images.