Cosi Ridevano (1998)

I gather that the title of this Italian film, a winner of the Golden Lion at Venice, translates to "how we laughed", which must be ironic since it is not really a happy tale.  I think the director is getting at the fact that the past is a different place and that our memories of it are coloured to seem better than the facts should allow.  In what is basically a two-hander, this film covers the period between 1958 and 1964 in the lives of two brothers who have come to Turin from Sicily to seek their fortune.  The substantially younger brother has arrived first, since his elder brother wants to ensure that he receives schooling and becomes a teacher.  When the latter eventually follows, it is clear that he is uneducated and unskilled, but that he will do whatever he can to ensure his brother's future.  The movie is frustrating at times since it is in four sections with a sizeable time lag between each of them, and the viewer must work out for himself what has happened in the interim.  For example, after his sixteenth birthday, we learn that the younger one has disappeared off the radar for some six months and it is not until much later that first we and then his brother discover where he has been. The irony is that although the brothers seem to have very little in common and although the younger treats the elder (who against the odds is becoming successful helping other emigrants find work) with some disdain, there is indeed a deep fraternal bond between them which only becomes truly apparent after a murder.  What happens next can only be understood in terms of brotherly love, but believe you me, it is no laughing matter.