Kaos (film)


Kaos is a 1984 Italian drama film directed by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani based on short stories by Luigi Pirandello. The film's title is after Pirandello's explanation of the local name Càvusu of the woods near his birthplace in the neighborhood of Girgenti, on the southern coast of Sicily, as deriving from the ancient Greek word kaos.

Plot

The film depicts four short stories from Pirandello's 15-volume series Novelle per un anno, which play around his birthplace in the 19th century. A raven, which in the introduction is shown to get a bell around his neck from locals, leads one from one story to the next. Each of the stories is approximately 40 minutes in length.
A 20-minute epilogue, Colloquio con la madre, describes Pirandello's fictional visit home many years after his mother has died. He asks his mother to retell the story of a trip to Malta she took as a child to visit her exiled father. The ending sequence showed children sliding down the vast slopes of white pumice that flowed into the sea on the island of Lipari.

Cast

Kaos won the 1985 David di Donatello awards for best production and best screenplay and was nominated for best music. It also won the Silver Ribbon award for best screenplay.
The film was very well received by critics, but its length may have prevented wide exposure. In his 2007 book , M. Owen Lee considered it the best movie to come out locally in 1986.

Reviews