Illuminata (1998)

John Turturro's homage to the world of theatrical make-believe may fall short of the shining beacons of this Shakespearean genre--Ingmar Bergman's Fanny and Alexander and Jean Renoir's The Golden Coach, for two--but his Illuminata casts considerable sweetness and light of its own. Mostly set in a teeming warren of private and performance spaces within a turn-of-the-century theater, the film follows the fluctuating fortunes of playwright Tuccio (Turturro), his lover-muse-leading lady (Katherine Borowitz, Turturro's offscreen wife), and their colorful company: Rufus Sewell and Georgina Cates, youthful, less wise projections of playwright and muse; Ben Gazzara as a grizzled old thespian forgetful of the line between reality and performance; Bill Irwin as the naive bit player who catches the hungry eye of Christopher Walken's deliciously over-the-top, acid-tongued critic; Susan Sarandon as a calculatingly seductive diva fighting her age; and commedia dell'arte types Aida Turturro and Leo Bassi. Tuccio's dying to get his play on the boards, but as theater owners Beverly D'Angelo (she of the endearing overbite) and Donal McCann (late star of Irish cinema, and of John Huston's The Dead) reasonably point out, his delicate fantasy about love and illusion lacks an ending. Zigzagging through Midsummer Night's Dream misunderstandings and misalliances, slipping seamlessly from mundane into artifice and back again, Illuminata wends its way toward Tuccio's bittersweet denouement. In Mac, his directorial debut, Turturro paid heartfelt tribute to his own blue-collar dad; this sophomore effort (cowritten with friend and fellow director Brandon Cole) glows with warm affection for audiences, actors, and those who dream their plays. --Kathleen Murphy Amazon.com

Illuminata

It has become one of our favorite movies. Strongly recommend for any theater lover. Script is original and funny, acting is just superb. Service was excellent - DVD delivered in 2 days. April 5, 2008

Almost TOO smart for it's own good!

Beautifully and artfully conceived and filmed,ILLUMINATA, which hosts an incredibly diverse and multi-talented cast under the direction of John Turturro,is magnificent and yet horribly convoluted.Do not bat an eyelash or you will miss something in this dialogue-laden,multi-character driven farce about the bizarre world of live theatre.It all comes together in the end,but getting there can be a bit dodgey at best.ILLUMINATA may just be a little TOO smart for it's own good.Definitely not light and frothy entertainment, but a highly complex film that requires the utmost of concentration. [...] February 26, 2007

Horrendously overplayed, wildly unsuccessful

How can a film with such a cast be so little known? Well, sadly because it just isn't any good. And equally sadly, the blame seems to rest fairly and squarely on John Turturo's shoulders, who fails as co-writer, leading man and director to ever bring a cohesiveness to his material. To call it disjointed is being kind.

Illuminata is one of those films where you can see what the original appeal was but which just wears you down as it gets worse and worse and worse while intermittently throwing you a bone only to snatch it away. The screenplay is a complete mess, John Turturo's direction extremely poor and the tone horrendously uneven, not simply from scene to scene but from actor to actor: some of them don't even seem to be acting in the same movie. With the very honorable exceptions of Katherine Borowitz and Rufus Sewell, most of the stellar cast embarrass themselves on a regular basis with outrageously unfunny OTT performances that are out of place even in a backstage period piece.

It's easy to imagine Woody Allen circa Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy being able to tame the material and bring out its strengths, but Turturo just lets it run all over the place, with the bad all too often swamping the brief passages of good dialog completely. A pity. November 11, 2005

Inticing the Senses...

This is a movie of free spirits, truely for romantics who can appriciate the brilliant colours and scenery, which this movie supplies. It has witty dialoge and will be sure to grab all of your senses. It is sensual and magnificent. Reds of pomegranate, and blues of lover's eyes... everything beautiful and pure. This movie is not dull, but subdued. If you are not in love, you will want to be. February 11, 2004

Watch again and again

A very interesting movie that needs to be watched more then once because of the different genres that reside in this movie. Having been on the set and watching the film build and unfold, it is a beautiful movie with its wonderful costumes and ideas.

Don't rate this movie by what we, the reviewers have said, rather watch the movie yourself and see what you get out of it. It is hard to understand at times but sometime movies need to be deeper then the fashes of action and explosions that catches our "attention span of a tick." Sit back and just enjoy something that is either meaningless or thought envoking. August 28, 2000

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