Happy as Lazzaro (2018)

IMDb plot summary: An unceasingly kind Italian peasant and his family are blatantly exploited by a tobacco baroness.

Directed by Alice Rohrwacher. Stars Adriano Tardiolo, Agnese Graziani, and Alba Rohrwacher.

Happy as Lazzaro is an Italian film about a wealthy landowner and the serfs that work her land. Specifically, we focus on one young man, Lazzaro, who has some sort of potentially intellectual disability and is not always fully cognizant of how to react to things, but he ends up befriending the son of the wealthy landowner. Then the whole family's lives are turned completely upside down and Lazzaro has to adjust to the new life and what this means about the relationship that he had built with the landowner's son. Watching this right after Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter was interesting because they're not dissimilar in terms of tone and vibe, especially that combination of heartwarming and devastating. This one also has a s sense of dread that nothing is going to go right for this character. It's the kind of film that I think I might have liked more ten years ago in terms of my movie taste and now it feels a little bit overtold in terms of theme. Overall, I enjoyed the setting of it and the way that it put the story together, but it didn't gel the way it might have for me at a different time in my life.

🎥 Happy as Lazzaro (2018)

📊 Ranked #2264/4207 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 46

lost to True Romance (held at #2134)

beat Without a Clue (#3175 → #3176)

beat Heat (#2653 → #2654)

beat Charulata (#2392 → #2393)

lost to Rebecca (held at #2263)

beat Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (#2327 → #2328)

beat Absolute Power (#2295 → #2296)

beat The Secret Life of Pets (#2279 → #2280)

beat The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) (#2271 → #2272)

beat The Party (#2267 → #2268)

beat Hamlet (#2265 → #2266)