Happy as Lazzaro (Lazzaro felice) [Sub: Eng]

Part of the movie's fun - and it is fun, once you adjust to its uninsistent rhythms - is how it forces you to share Lazarro's go-along-to-get-along ebullience.

Rohrwacher isn't interested in resurrecting the ghosts of movies past so much as channeling the Brothers Grimm. She does not want to just show you pretty pictures, but a genuine vision.

Tardiolo's silent radiance and his director's offhand audacity produce their own bewildering cinematic alchemy.

Easily among this year's finest films and laced with an unapologetic social message, 'Happy As Lazzaro' dares one to imagine a reality where each individual would task themselves to be as selfless and morally whole as its main protagonist.

This movie feels bracingly new and also like something that has been here forever. It has the urgency of a news bulletin and the authority of a classic.

The film isn't entirely free of didacticism or easy sentiment, but a sense of delayed recognition is what makes it such a knotty experience.

A one of a kind experience, where the country's past and present commingle.

[Rohrwacher] provides the truth of our collective contemporary paranoia. Rather than see [Lazzaro] as a saint to exploit, he becomes a devil harboring ulterior motives.

It's in this same spirit of unchangeability that Lazzaro's goodness endures -not as a foil to the forces of exploitation, but as their instrument.

Odd, confusing magical drama has some language, violence.

Happy as Lazzaro is well-attuned to exploitation and misery, but it doesn't beckon audiences to shed tears. The real vision is a more cynical one.

[Happy as Lazzaro] is a true standout: a Super 16mm fugue state that is both elegy and lament for a world that once valued selfless deeds and the humanistic interaction between fellow men above self-preservation and eternal mistrust.