“The Reach”, by Luca Caserta. A.K.A ” The Italian movie that made the impossible”

Capolavoro! That means “masterpiece” in Italian. I tried, but I could not find anything better to say to start this review, because “The Reach”, directed by Luca Caserta is a “obra de arte”. That means “masterpiece” in portuguese.

Before I started to watch Dollar Baby to write this review, I read the original short story as I always do. By doing that I was pretty surprised when I saw that I had only read this short story once, 20 years ago. And I didn’t like it back then. Funny how our personal preferences change after some years, right?

Because today I just loved this short story. I believe that this kind of change of mind happens because we change, we grow up and we become a better version of ourselves, a wiser version (thank God). For me the same thing happened with Shakespeare‘s “Macbeth” and King’s “Gerald’s Game“. But once I gave them a second chance I saw how good they are. Now the same thing happened to “The Reach“, I just loved the story. This happened to me for the first Wolverine movie too (hey, be nice, don’t judge).

This is a beautiful story that talks about death, old age and dealing with the finiteness of life. It is really beautiful, it is King at his best and I know now that 20 years ago I wasn’t ready to enjoy this story the way I am today, because I wasn’t mature enough.

And, once I finished the short story I looked at the Dollar Baby’s poster and thought “man, how can anyone make a good movie based upon this short story? It is almost impossible for an independent filmmaker with a low budget to achieve that!”.  Well, Luca Caserta did it. He nailed it, his version of “The Reach” is amazing! And believe me when I say, he made something almost impossible.

There is a reason why there aren’t too many versions of this short story as a Dollar Baby: snow, too old actress and the damm frozen sea that the  characters cross at some points in the story. On the other hand, we have a lot of versions of “The Man Who Loved Flowers” and “All That You Love Will Be Carried Away” (yeah, I know), because in a way they are easier stories to adapt with a low budget. But if you think about it, we have just a few  “Doctor’s Case“, “Survivor Type” , ” I Know What You Need” and only one Dollar Baby version of “The Monkey” and that happens because, like “The Reach”, these stories has some things that make it too hard to make a low budget short movie. And, let’s face it: we have just one James Douglas, just one Billy Hanson, one Julia Marchese and only one Spencer Sherry. But now, I thank God that we have a Luca Caserta, because he did the impossible: one amazing, amazing, amazing, (19 times amazing) Dollar Baby based upon a very difficult short story by Stephen King.

There are some movies that at the first images you already know if it is gonna be a good movie or not. I remember one movie with “The Rock” and Samuel L. Jackson that at the first seconds, the first dialogues I thought “this is gonna be a bad movie”. And I was right, that movie sucks. The Kubrick version for “The Shining” is quite the opposite, the first seconds, that music and that view, man…. Now, “The Reach” gave me the same vibe: when I saw that sea (not frozen) I automatically thought “this is gonna be good”, but I was wrong. It was not good, it was amazing! Yes, the cinematography is beautiful (grazie Lorenzo Pezzano), the art design is so rich, but what I really wanna talk about this short movie are 3 things: screenplay, the director and that so talented actress called Jana Balkan!!!

The screenplay adapted in such an intelligent way this short story that until I had seen this Italian movie, I thought that it was an impossible short story to adapt into a Dollar Baby. First of all, I used to think that because of the way King wrote that story, it is a very introspective story, almost without dialogues. The story goes on and on almost entirely with the main character narrating the whole thing. I faced the same difficulty while adapting “All That You Love Will Be Carried Away” and most of the versions I saw from this short story do use a narrator. And for “The Reach” I would never imagine a short movie without a narrator and with just a few dialogues. But Luca Caserta really nailed adapting this short story. Caserta did write a narrator (the main character’s voice, like King did) and it has dialogues too, buuuut Stella isn’t really narrating the story to us, she is talking to herself. Out loud sometimes, but most of the time inside her head. And this was genius! Grazie, Luca!!!

By choosing this way to narrate the movie, Caserta found a balance between being faithful and creative at the same time. And it is not boring like some narrated movies are, the Dollar Baby does have a good rhythm. And, most important of all: it is so real, because talking with ourselves is a thing that some people do. Some people, old or new, talk to themselves. My mother does, out loud sometimes. What hell, I do it too, in my head. I talk to myself a lot in my head, I “write” things in my head like I am rehearsing so later I can put it out into the paper. But older people do this more often and considering that the main character is 95 years old and she is alone almost all the time, it looks so real that she talks to herself. Or even if she is not alone, like in that funeral scene where she is next to some friends and she is narrating while they talk, but suddenly she stops and starts to talk to them. It is amazing how well written this scene was.

The screenplay covers almost all the important things of the short story, all the crucial information is there, but besides this “talking to herself” thing, the most brilliant thing Caserta did as a writer and as a director was the solution he gave for the snow and the frozen sea scene. It was beautiful and poetic. First, the snow: in Stella’s dream she is dancing under the snow that is falling from the sky and it is so poetic.That light coming from behind and no sound, man… that was beautiful! And later, that other scene with snow…. Such an important scene for the story, the most important one actually,  and Caserta was brilliant! He almost made me cry. These two scenes show how good Luca Caserta is. That was the job of a good director and a good screenwriter. Grazie, ragazzo!

Also in the screenplay, Caserta nailed it when he put some current Italian news mixed with ficcional news from that island, it was pretty cool, I bet the Italian audience really liked it.

Now, let me take one moment before I start to talk about Jana Balkan, the main actress. I need this moment to talk to myself inside my head (and to have time to open Google translator) because english is not my native language and I wanna be fair to her talent choosing the right words for it.

Jana Balkan, I looked for her name in IMDB and unfortunately I could not find more than 3 previous works. That is sad, because her talent is something almost touchable in this Dollar Baby. She catches our attention at her very first scene in “The Reach” and holds it until the end. Even if you don’t speak Italian you can still feel so much true to her lines, almost like we knew that old lady in person. King’s words are powerful in the original short story and as I said before, Caserta wrote a faithful screenplay. 

But one of Caserta’s biggest achievements in this short movie as a director was when he chose Jana Balkan as his main actress. Jana gives us powerful and touching acting. Having an amazing actress like her combined with a great screenplay like the one Caserta wrote, man, that was pure gold. I believed in every single line that came out of her mouth. I believe because I know women like that, my mother, my grandmothers, aunts … Ms Balkan, every scene that you are in in this movie carries the weight of your talent, grazie.

It makes sense that an Italian filmmaker nailed doing a movie like this, because not only Italian people have this tradicion of matriarchy, strong old women as a central figure inside a family, but also there is a kind of drama that only Italians can print on screen. And I don’t know how to explain. Maybe it is something about the language, the sound of the Italian language I don’t know. What I do know is that here in Brazil our women are kind of similar: hot blood creatures with an explosive temper. Women that can rule the world, that is the streight I see in Italian and Brazilian women.

What makes me sad, when I think about Jana Balkan and so many other great older actresses, is that it is kind of rare to see great characters written for those women. I bet that if you stop to think about it you won’t remember 10 recent movies with an elderly female in the lead role. Comercial movies or art movies, it is not that usual to see older people as protagonists. And that is sad, that is a shame, because we do have Balkans, Montenegros, Denchs, De Niros, Pacinos and so many other examples. Great older actors and actresses we have, Jana is a perfect example. But we lack screenwriters looking in that direction. I bet if we had, our artists would live longer.

The Dollar Baby’s grade? We from SKSM give 5 fingers of the dead guy’s hand. I would give five more, but the other five fingers we found at the frozen sea and they are still frozen, so since we are not sure if they belong to the dead guy, well, it would be better to give only the five he says it is his.

Hope you guys like this review. A piece of advice: if you have the chance to watch this short movie at a film fest , please, watch it. I bet you are gonna cry…

See you next time, guys.

Leonardo Granado