Marx Can Wait

Bellocchio deals in the deeply personal yet somehow not in the private; there is a vital robustness to his methods, and the new film, despite facing intractable problems from long ago... feels sociable and even touched with laughter.

“Marx Can Wait” is entirely absorbed in the faces, voices and personalities of Bellocchio’s brothers and sisters, present and absent, but it also feels, by implication or osmosis, to be telling the story of Italy in the past half century.

A crucial and profound addition to the filmography of one of the greatest living filmmakers, and it ends with a loving reconciliation with the past that is so moving and so convincing because it is so hard-won.

Marco Bellocchio uses his film, a delicate mix of biography and autobiography, as the catalyst for long-delayed therapy.

Even at its most emotionally awkward or loose, it signals a filmmaking sensibility where Bellocchio... is refreshingly averse to viewing his own past through rose-colored glasses.

A severe late work from a master.

Marx Can Wait becomes Bellocchio's intimate and moving testimony, who seeks to share the complexity of his creative process and how the loss of his twin brother has left an indelible footprint in his life and work. [Full review in Spanish]

Religion stays with Bellocchio, as does imagination and ingenuity, which makes Marx Can Wait an extraordinary document of the moral evolution of an artist and his family.

Intimate, honest and poignant. A heartfelt, unflinching and profound documentary that displays Marco Bellocchio's emotional maturity, wisdom, compassion, empathy and introspectiveness.

. It's an investigation of past sins, a laying bare of all the bullshit fakery that Italian-Catholics are forced to grow up with. It's a purging and a mea culpa.