|
|
List Price: $29.95Amazon.com's Price: $26.99 You Save: $2.96 (10%)Prices subject to change.
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Buy Now!
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: DVD
EAN: 9781567304138
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Widescreen, NTSC
ISBN: 1567304133
Label: New Yorker Video
Manufacturer: New Yorker Video
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: New Yorker Video
Region Code: 1
Release Date: July 19, 2005
Running Time: 91 minutes
Sales Rank: 104331
Studio: New Yorker Video
Theatrical Release Date: 2000
Editorial Review:
Amazon.com:
Superb acting is the primary reason to see The Farewell, an incisive portrait of playwright/poet Bertolt Brecht. As directed by Jan Schütte, this German domestic drama is not a dry, documentary-like profile but rather an elegy of Brecht spanning one single day, just three days before Brecht's death in the summer of 1956. The once-towering giant of German theater (played to perfection by Josef Bierbichler) is preparing to leave his lakeside cottage in the East German town of Bukow and return to Berlin for the new theater season, but a storm is brewing on the home front: Having maintained no fewer than three mistresses at any one time during his adult life, Brecht is now in the midst of dissent among his extended family of women including his wife, daughter, current and former mistresses, and a political reformer who shares his wife with Brecht in a personal arrangement that's starting to unravel at the seams. With German secret police poised to arrest two of Brecht's houseguests for high treason, the idyllic cottage becomes a setting for petty jealousies, violated trusts and the final remnants of hope and tenderness in the writer's circle of intimates. It's a sad but moving film of an artist in decline, not for all tastes but rewarding for anyone who's curious about the eccentric lives of artists and Brecht in particular. --Jeff Shannon
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating: - Bertold Brecht's Farewell to an existencial existence
First off, this is a love story, about a man who just might love his hat, more than his wife, daughter, mistress, or ex mistress/washed up actress. Of course, that's not fair, but is one of the darkly comic motifs in the film. Bertold Brecht is one half of the revolutionary team, who gave us MAHAGONY, and THREE PENNY OPERA, with his ex-partner Kurt Weil. Whereas Weil "sold out" and moved to capitalistic Hollywood, and wrote musicials like ONE TOUCH OF VENUS, Brecht stayed in Germany (only leaving ... Read More
|
|
