Synopsis
I Want to Hide is an Italian biographical drama film, also known as The Hidden Painter, directed by Giorgio DiRiti and starring actor Elio Germano, telling the life story of the Italian painter Antonio Ligabue, who showed a talent for painting since childhood, but had a very bumpy childhood, and was given to a couple for adoption after his mother's death, but his mental problems made him unpopular, until he met a sculptor and began to learn to draw and sculpture. Step into the realm of art.
Find freedom in your artistic creation
Artists' stories have always been the subject of film and television works, just this year, from the pianist's "Finale", the sculptor's "Sin II", to the "Jiao Orange Cult" about the relationship between the painter and the art critic, all of which have made different presentations of art in different story types, and this time "I Want to Hide" focuses on the biographical story of italian painter Antonio Ligapol, taking us deep into the life of the most important artist of the twentieth century, witnessing the inner entanglement and persistence of his creative process.
Is "I Want to Hide" a good review?
Perhaps compared with the nineteenth-century Dutch painter Van Gogh, everyone is not familiar with Antonio Ligapol, a painter known as the "Italian Van Gogh", but just as last year's "Eternal Gate" started from his late oil paintings in a mental hospital, allowing Willem Dafo to interpret a lonely and sad Van Gogh, and "I Want to Hide" also revolves the story around Antonio Ligapol's life tormented by mental illness and physical and mental health, and successfully let the actor Elio Bergo Bergo, who has won the David Award for Best Actor three times, be the same as Antonio Ligapol, who has won the David Award for Best Actor three times. Germano won the 2020 Berlin Film Festival Silver Bear Award.
Therefore, as a biographical film selected for the main competition of the Berlin Film Festival, "I Want to Hide" takes us to know Antonio Ligapol, an artist, in an interlaced narrative way, from being an italian illegal immigrant born in Switzerland, being adopted by a local couple after the death of his family, being bullied and ridiculed by his classmates because of his autistic child during his studies, to being repatriated to Italy, meeting the sculptor Marino after entering and leaving a mental hospital many times, and the film gives a detailed account of his life experience. All let the audience better understand the fundamental value of Antonio Ligapol's paintings that reflect each other's lives under the influence of a rough childhood and physical illness.
The creative life of Antonio Ligapol
I like the stylistic tone of the whole film "I Want to Hide", not as boring and dull as many biographical films in the past, but while retaining the artistry of the work, it also depicts Antonio Ligapol's life experience with vivid and interesting and unstable impetuosity, in which not only is his chaotic psychological state of being deeply involved in contradictions from childhood to adulthood, but also the relationship between him and the characters around him and the people, things and things he pursues all his life, and also in the whole film of "I Want to Hide" through Elio Ligapol. Germano's performance is quite realistic.
Antonio Ligapol, as a representative figure of the Italian primitive painters, "I Want to Hide" naturally devotes a lot of space to his creative process, and fully demonstrates his obsession and love for animals. In addition to the audience's talent for depicting animals and bringing their characteristics and images to lifelike in his paintings with strong styles and bold colors, the audience can also fully feel the importance of art to him as if the things around him no longer exist, and how he contacts and explores the world through creation.
The theme of the plot of "I Want to Hide"
Antonio Ligapol would be called "Italian Van Gogh" for a reason, not only because their creative styles were slightly similar, but also because they were also plagued by mental illness and tried to find themselves through creation in pain. Although Antonio Ligapol's paintings were affirmed by many art critics and collectors during his lifetime, leaving him out of the general plight of the artist, and even owning 2 cars and 12 heavy motorcycles, he did not have a close friend gordon and a brother who loved him.
Therefore, after the montage of the chaotic thinking of a mentally ill person in the first part of "I Want to Hide" is like a montage that allows the audience to fully understand the background of Antonio Ligapol's birth, we can better understand that even if he has achieved something over the years, he still cannot change the past experience that has suffered a lot of pain. Although such an amazing treatment is relatively rare in the second half of the film, it may be due to the relative stability of Antonio Ligapol's current mental state, or it may be that the director chooses to focus on his desire for love and hope to be valued and affirmed by others, but it does not affect the presentation of the characters in the work itself.
The opening and ending of "I Want to Hide"
In a way, the first shot of "I Want to Hide" has already pointed out the theme of the entire film, and Antonio Ligapol, who is covered in a black cloth, shows one eye to observe the movements of the outside world, which means that even if he is in this chaotic world, he still tries to pursue freedom with artistic creation? However, it is sad that we can enjoy many of his paintings with animal or self-themes in "I Want to Hide", but we have also seen many times the contradiction that he lacked confidence in himself due to his experience from childhood to adulthood, and it was difficult to create satisfactory works, but he discarded it and destroyed it because of the words of others.
We may often hear people say, "When God closes a door, he will open a window for you." "But in fact, even if there are more windows, it can't erase the reality that life will lose that door forever." Perhaps his innate illness allowed him to take his talent to a higher level, helping him to become a simple painter who could create many fascinating works from around his life even without formal training, but this was the biggest obstacle in his realization of his longing for life, but it never disappeared, corresponding to the ending of the movie "I Want to Hide" and his later life, which can not help but make people feel regret.
"I want to hide" film review conclusion
Overall, "I Want to Hide" relies on the amazing performance of actor Elio Germano to fully interpret the life story of Antonio Ligapol, an innocent and crazy 20th-century simple painter, not only allowing the characters and artworks to achieve a clever balance and achieve complementary effects, but also allowing us to re-see the birth of art and the meaning it represents by knowing this artist who is rarely familiar to anyone in Taiwan, I think it is the greatest value of the movie "I want to hide".
Score:
Entertainment coolness: 6/10
Storyline: 8/10
Atmosphere creation: 7/10
Acting performance: 9/10
Subject freshness: 8/10
Overall rating: 7.8/10