FT: "Bella" is not sappy or preachy, but "compelling and beautiful"

Amanda Shaw,  junior fellow at First Things magazine, defends "Bella" against critics who say the movie is "sappy" and "saccharine," and argues that far from being a "fairy tale", it is a story about real life and authentic love.

Comments

[Catherine Harmon]

Sit back and wait for First Things to be accused of drinking "the Bella Kool-Aid."

I wonder if Fr. Neuhaus has received his boxed set of Touched By An Angel yet. Because, as we know, no one with any taste in movies could possibly find anything positive to say about Bella...

[Dan]

I haven't seen it yet -- I plan to see it this weekend. The reviews, and the discussion about the reviews, bring to mind something that a very sophisticated Polish professor of literature said in my freshman humanities class: "corny" is not necessarily bad; some quite good art can be said to be "corny."

[Gina]

I think you and I have been visiting the same blog, Catherine. :-)

[Joseph Previtali]

Three cheers for "Bella."

I saw it for the first time a couple years ago in Rome, and I saw it for the second time just last week. It was even better the second time around.

The symbolism (e.g. the "crying scene" in which Jose with his mother is mourning the death of the young girl from the car accident, while Nina in the bathtub is mourning the existence of Bella) is thought-provoking and the story moves so seamlessly that one is surprised that the ending has already arrived.

I remember thinking to myself as I watched it that "Bella" is a movie of which Josef Pieper (love as the affirmation of existence) and Christopher Dawson (see "Catholicism and the Bourgeois Mind") would have been very proud. I think that speaks volumes in favor of its profundity and beauty.

[Sharon]

Apparently alot of the critics gave Bella the thumbs down but after the first weekend 97% of the cinema goers liked it.

[Roseanne Therese Sullivan]

Bella is bella. I loved the gritty New York City feel of it. And some lovely scenes that were filmed on a beach on Long Island.

The beginning of the movie with the frenetic restaurant scenes had a lot of the intensity that kept me coming back to the Rocco (restaurant) reality show week after week a few years ago. [And I don't watch TV much or reality shows at all otherwise.]

I am very glad Bella was made. To my mind, the conversion of the main actor and co-producer is an even better story.

Things I didn't like: too much foreshadowing. Butterfly symbolism and other symbolism were a bit too heavy-handedly applied.

Things I especially liked besides what I already mentioned: the character Jose. I'm relieved to see a movie that shows that a man would help a woman without an ulterior motive and put his life on the line to save another life. I liked the way that loving family life was portrayed, and that the movie showed that even a character who walks all over everyone can grow and change instead of being made into a stock villain.

I also liked the cinematography. The dialogue was snappy and witty. There is a lot of buzz about this movie among a loosely-associated group of single Catholics I know in Silicon Valley. Everyone was looking forward to it with anticipation and people have been going to it and recommending it to friends.