A Magnificent Haunting (2012)

Although it is a gay film, it does not focus on gay issue (love, cruelty of life, paradox of choices, etc.) but focuses on the normal life and thought of a human, his name is Pietro.   Pietro wants to be an actor, and endeavours to do all that he can to become one, but he just fails. When he has his own apartment and the upcoming dinner with his love, bitter truth reveals to the viewers what they do not know until then about Pietro, about the way he is obsessed with love. However, and also marvelously handling, the film immediately draws our attention to the other and also the biggest event in the film. Pietro meets ghosts. Little by little, Pietro finds way to understand the existence of the ghosts.

Also, bit by bit does he learn from those “artist” ghosts who were actors and actresses at their time. Will luck smile on Pietro? Viewers will decide for themselves when Pietro continuously “loses” the expected and “gets” the unexpected during his encounters in life.   At the end of the film, truth reveals about the death of the actors and actress, the reason why they become ghosts.

Again, tenderly tackling, the film draws our attention to the emotions and actions of Pietro when viewers observe his eyes when he watches another man who is his neighbor and also with those eyes at the final stage do viewers understand now there are things more important than just falling in love and living for oneself. The happy life is a life which gives away happiness to others’, and the meaningful life is the life which is not born with meaningful things but has to create meanings for itself.

Intelligent comedy with meanings, up and down contexts with purposes, real drama with truthful emotions and feelings, the film combines and diverts things into a tasty soup. Viewers’ role is to sip it slowly and tenderly…