So this is a three-hour historical epic that’s also an intimate character portrait.

The historical epic part is pretty obvious: The movie takes place in Sicily in 1860, and it’s all about… uh, this Garibaldi guy who conquers Italy with like an army of peasant irregulars, overthrowing the… Bourbons? As in like the French Revolution Bourbons, I assume?

Okay, so I don’t know mid-19th century Italian history much/literally at all. But it’s clear that there are battles and the old nobility is losing their ancient privileges and a new order of republicans (or constitutional monarchists, anyway?) are coming in and creating a new political and social order.

Which gets into the intimate character portrait part, because the protagonist is an older (aka: probably just a bit older than me, goddammit) prince, who is seeing these changes happen, and positioning his family to adapt to them while trying to retain his dignity and honor, but finds himself filled with melancholy at the loss of the old world and his own youth.

It’s a well-done movie, with lush, gorgeous settings (particularly in the ball that makes up the last half hour of the film) and mostly understated acting. But… it didn’t really grab me. I think honestly part of the problem is the missing cultural context. 1860 is like about the time of the American Civil War, right, and we all know in a very detailed way what happened in that, and a movie that is set around that time can use its events to lend a lot of dramatic power. My suspicion is that Italians might know as much about the wars of 1860 in their own history, and that there would be a lot of resonance and meaning derived from that, which I’m missing entirely.