For all its harsh symbolism, its often despairing view of people’s potential for harm and exploitation, Happy as Lazzaro still finds many moments of lyrical beauty. She does so with confidently opaque artistry, doing no pandering or simplifying. Rohrwacher is acknowledging, and in some senses lamenting, the end of something rather large-the closing, maybe, of an entire history. But the film also has a deeper, more universal thrum underscoring that specificity. The tale of a simple, agrarian young man who becomes something of a modern-day saint as the lurch of time drags rural peasants into the hardscrabble realities of urbanization, Happy as Lazzaro is very much about the political and economic landscape of Italy. The frequency on which Rohrwacher broadcasts her film-between dream and nightmare between sweet, irreverent satire and biting tragedy of socio-economic rot-has an insistent allure. But in the months since, I’ve been unable to shake its strange poetry. I wasn’t entirely enamored of Alice Rohrwacher’s curious fable-allegory when I first saw it at the Cannes Film Festival.

Thrillis best movies 2017