Happy as Lazzaro (2018, Alice Rohrwacher) (Patreon)

UNAVOIDABLE SPOILERS AHOY

Gotta give Rohrwacher credit—I thought I had a very firm grasp on this movie almost an hour into it (having read absolutely nothing in advance), and then suddenly discovered that I did not. Thing is, though, Lazzaro's inexplicable leap into the future, while unexpected and "cool," ultimately doesn't matter very much. He's a wide-eyed Gump-ian naïf, seemingly oblivious to what's happened, and his family, while astonished by his appearance (in both senses of the word), aren't really affected by his presence in any concrete way, except insofar as he brings them into contact with their former employers/exploiters. (Not a big deal, but Lazzaro finding middle-aged Tancredi due to the latter's penchant for giving every dog the same name skews a little hokey. Or is it supposed to be the same dog? Hard to know with this movie.) Had Lazzaro eschewed magical realism altogether and simply skipped forward in time, following the sharecroppers into their alternative mode of marginal subsistence, it would have made exactly the same pointed observations. And since "rich people are awful" doesn't strike me as especially complex (they'll spurn you and take all your expensive pastries!), and the ostensible protagonist functions wholly as a symbol/plot device, there isn't much to grab hold of apart from the sheer boldness of the conceit. Only the lovely scene in which organ music follows Lazzaro and company out of the church feels genuinely magical; otherwise, I mostly see didacticism working overtime to disguise itself as whimsy.