The great polymath and intellectual Johann Wolfgang von Goethe once famously remarked “there are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One of these is roots, the other, wings.”, a statement that has lingered in the minds of many parents as they endure the emotional challenges that come when they realise that the children they raised are at the point where they need to be set free, allowed to pursue their own adult lives. Being a parent is an experience that contains many different emotions, and requires a steely resolve and abundance of compassion – both for the children and yourself – to navigate, particularly as they grow older and become more independent. This is explored extensively in Everybody’s Fine (Italian: Stanno tutti bene), a poignant and compelling drama in which Giuseppe Tornatore (in his follow-up to his sensation Cinema Paradiso) tells the story of Matteo Scuro, a widower who has settled into spending his golden years perched in his idyllic home in Sicily, but has grow tired of waiting for his five adult children to visit him. He does not hold any disdain for their absence, genuinely believing that their jobs on the mainland keep them busy, and that their own families will be a priority – and as a result, he decides to take matters into his own hands, venturing across the country in an effort to see each one of his children. However, what he imagines to be a beautiful and poetic journey to reconnect with his offspring turns into a more complex affair, since he realises that they are not quite the people he remembered – they lead their own unique lives, but have seemingly grown to be entirely different to who he raised, having secrets and shortcomings that come as quite a surprise to their father, who is not upset at their flaws, but rather bitterly disappointed in how they have refused to include him in their lives. A beautiful and complex character-driven story in which the director crafts yet another touching tribute to the human condition, Everybody’s Fine is an impressive achievement, and a film that captures certain ideas in vivid, stark detail.

At a cursory glance, we do not expect Everybody’s Fine to be particularly revolutionary, since the themes situated right at the heart of the story are relatively conventional and not seen as unique in any way. However, one of Tornatore’s greatest skills as an artist is his ability to take common subjects and rework them to be extremely captivating and unique, while never attempting to redefine the genre. His films are conventional on the surface, but have a depth that we only realise once we have allowed ourselves to leap onto the wavelength, following the story as it weaves through the various corridors of the human condition, finding meaning in the most unexpected of places. The concept of the road drama is one that the director clearly finds fascinating, and he uses a relatively conventional premise as fertile ground for a more profound examination of fatherhood, identity and life in post-war Italy, which are all core themes that dictate this film and allow it to be such a poetic and meaningful glimpse into the life of a man who is simply yearning for the human connection, something he has craved for years, but has failed to achieve due to the sheer fact that no one in his life seems willing to pay any attention to his efforts to maintain their relationship, a daunting realisation to anyone with adult children who have chosen their own individual lives. We don’t often get the chance to see films that contain such sincere examinations of the human condition, particularly from the perspective of parents, who are usually relegated to being mere supporting players in the lives of their children. It is even less common to find a film that reconciles this theme with that of the male loneliness epidemic, with the idea of stoic masculinity being a critical feature that defines this film and makes it such a poignant exploration of the day-to-day lives of the people who are usually invisible from these narratives, showing just how important it is to acknowledge their journeys and how they handle some of life’s most harsh and disconcerting realities. It’s a fascinating deconstruction of a number of ideas, and Tornatore makes exceptional use of his entire arsenal of skills to create this unforgettable narrative.

By the time Everybody’s Fine was conceived, Marcello Mastroianni was clearly in the final stages of his career. While he was obviously still in impeccable health and was as active in the industry as ever, he was older and in the process of transitioning into a new chapter of his life. As a result, nearly every film made with him around this time was designed with the intention of giving him at least one final towering performance, with every director with whom he collaborated in the last fifteen years of his life being dedicated to showcasing his skills and providing him with a channel to express himself as an artist. The result is half a dozen potential swan songs, each one of them magnificent and compelling solely because of his incredible work, and how the directors consistently set out to highlight the precise qualities that made him such an effortlessly magnetic screen presence. While it would seem wildly inappropriate to say that this film contains his greatest performance – it’s a relatively small, intimate drama that doesn’t have the scope of some of his more unimpeachable masterpieces – it is still a wonderful opportunity for him to show that he maintained that spark of rebellion and subversion well into his golden years. It’s one of his quieter and more intimate films, but his charisma and sheer brilliance are never in doubt throughout. Mastroianni carries the entirety of Everybody’s Fine on his shoulders to the point where the whole film hinges on his ability to make even the most abstract moments seem nothing short of plausible and genuine. His wit and candour has rarely been more appropriately used, and while it does require him to play in a more subdued register, there is never a moment where we aren’t wholeheartedly engaged in absolutely everything that Mastroianni is setting out to do throughout this film, a beautiful and poetic ode to one of the greatest actors to ever work in the medium.

Tornatore tends to craft films that constantly strike a nerve, even when they are looking at very simple themes – in fact, it’s the more straightforward approach that makes his work so compelling and engaging. At first, we are led to believe that Everybody’s Fine will be a relatively conventional drama, one that follows a simple narrative structure and employs a few moments of well-placed humour to counteract the more downbeat moments in which it looks at the loneliness of the protagonist. However, the director utilises several fascinating concepts in the process of telling the story – there are scenes where the main character breaks the fourth wall and speaks directly to the camera (although the reason behind this is made clear in the final scene, and its truly heartbreaking), and the film as a whole takes on a more stream-of-consciousness structure, designing itself to evoke the sense of continuous movement, the kind that does not have a particular destination in mind, and is instead more focused on the journey. This is all tied together by the emotional content of the film, with Everybody’s Fine being a perfect example of how to grab the viewer’s attention and hold it throughout. As we’d expect from the premise, the film does contain several opportunities for more intense emotions – as a whole, it’s quite a melancholic piece, an operatic drama in terms of both its underlying narrative and the approach the director takes to exploring these ideas. Yet, it refuses to resort to the usual techniques that we would expect – it’s not a heavy-handed, overly sentimental piece, nor is it flippant in its efforts to make light of what is essentially quite a sad story. The core of this film is the director’s fervent efforts to surprise us, and while it does hit some familiar beats, the majority of this film refuses to lean too heavily on the more obvious emotions, which only makes Everybody’s Fine more engaging and intriguing.

Everybody’s Fine is the perfect example of just how effective a well-crafted drama can be when there is an emphasis on the characters and how they are used, as well as the story that surrounds them. It may not reach the impossible heights of Cinema Paradiso (which would be challenging for even the most seasoned of filmmakers), but it nonetheless proves to be nearly as moving, particularly in how it revisits themes such as ageing, masculinity and family, all of which are presented without any attempt to redefine what these ideas represent, but instead exploring precisely how they factor into our personal journeys, defining our identity and ensuring that we are constantly in command of our own destiny as far as possible. It’s a very simple drama in which we follow the protagonist to several major cities around Italy, the film functioning in a very small but not any less substantial way as a whistle-stop tour of one of the most beautiful countries in Europe, using the picaresque journey of the protagonist as an opportunity to pay tribute to Italy and its people, which has often been a goal for Tornatore when crafting these tender and moving examinations of society and culture, focusing on their customs and the tug-of-war between tradition and modernity. This theme in particular is one of the core propellants for this film, which is a quiet and ruminative meditation on fatherhood and the challenges of connecting with those to whom we are bound by blood, but often struggle to maintain beyond the bare minimum. It’s a poignant, compelling character study that is pieced together with such beauty and consistency, right down to the smallest detail, and eventually comes to be viewed as nothing short of a wholeheartedly moving drama that once again demonstrates the incredible power of a simple story that is well-told and has some clear objectives in mind as it explores many of these complex and resonant themes.