Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		3.0

Captain Corelli's Mandolin Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman May 11, 2018

Captain Corelli's Mandolin crafts an inferior romance but succeeds in telling the bleak, horrible tale of war. The film contrasts the beauty of humanity and nature with the brutality of war. It flubs its romance and neither the casting nor the acting are great, but the film finds a well-defined emotional center as it explores that juxtaposition between light and dark that shines on, and threatens to destroy, a small coastal Greek village during World War II. Its whole is more palatable than its pieces, essentially, though the audience will find itself more concerned for basic humanity than the individual players. It's a beautiful film in many ways, stale in others, a frustrating experience that strays from its source novel and historical fact and delivers, in total, a movie with more promise and potential than Director John Madden (Shakespeare in Love) is capable of providing it.

At the outset of World War II, in a tranquil Greek seaside village, a young couple is separated by the cruel hands of war. Mandras (Christian Bale) loves his fiancé Pelagia (Penélope Cruz) but believes in the cause and goes off to fight a distant war. As time passes, he sends no word of his well-being back home. He never appears on a casualty list, and Pelagia cannot help but worry. He eventually returns home, wounded, and matters are complicated when the Italian army marches into town. Pelagia’s father, the locale doctor (John Hurt), initially refuses to quarter any of the invading soldiers but strikes a deal for medicine and supplies in exchange for housing the dashing Italian Captain, Corelli (Nicolas Cage), a man with a kind heart and a love for music. He’d rather engage his men in song than the enemy on the battlefield. As the occupation continues and arriving German forces complicate matters, Pelagia’s growing feelings for Corelli and Mandras’ resistance to the relationship all threaten local stability.

The film's more significant themes of pain and healing are often lost to a sloppy, unconvincing romance, whether between Pelagia and Mandras or Pelagia and Corelli. The characters are not shapeless, but they are not provided the thorough, convincing depth necessary to allow the audience into their lives and find reason to care for their romance or well-being, beyond, of course, basic humanity, an area where the film does do well to tear them down in the horrors of war, both directly and indirectly alike. Still, the film plays more as wasted potential and less as a well-realized drama of love in war, love beyond boundaries of uniform, country, and culture. It's content to tell a story, not to inhabit it, content to show it but not live it. There's plenty of fundamental, foundational excellence here, visually and narratively alike, but it never connects with enthusiasm or depth. It seems to always find ways to turn away from its high points and in turn allow the film to anguish in mediocrity, often painfully close to excellence but never taking command and working to excel.

Performances are major stumbling block for the film. Nicolas Cage overacts and underperforms in the lead, forcing his Italian accent and stumbling through the film with little sense of emotional depth for the character or understanding of the film's more intimate directions. The venerable Christian Bale cannot inject his Mandras with the depth the story provides him, never finding the character's center and often relating him to an image and idea and less a complex flesh-and-bone individual. Cruz and Hurt mope about without much conviction either, and the film feels ever flaccid under the baggage of the lightweight performances. It's a shame that the film never comes together. There are good ideas aplenty, endless opportunities for greater depth and narrative excellence, but the film never emerges from a murky middle ground lined with potential but soured by poorly performing players and a relative absence of well-defined dramatic purpose and cohesion.

Captain Corelli's Mandolin Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Let the inconsistency continue! Universal's spotty track record for catalogue releases makes each new title a gamble. This gamble pays off. More or less. Captain Corelli's Mandolin doesn't approach the catalogue release picture quality zenith, but it features a fairly good, somewhat organic filmic texturing. Grain is not entirely fluid, sometimes appearing frozen in place, sometimes appearing more natural and true, but in any shot, scene, or sequence the image does not appear grossly noise reduced, smoothed over, or pasty-flat and significantly processed. Textures are fairly sharp and well defined, whether characters and clothes or beautiful Greek countryside, seaside, and village locales. Colors are pleasantly rich, finding a good baseline vibrancy and accuracy in everything from popping greens to red blood. Black levels don't cause too much trouble and skin tones appear accurate. There are a few signs of print deterioration, some scattered splotches and speckles, but nothing that ever interferes to any bothersome degree. No other significant source or encode flaws are apparent. This one's not half bad by any measure.

Captain Corelli's Mandolin Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Captain Corelli's Mandolin is largely in-tune on Blu-ray. The film's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack can be a little muddled and lacking absolute, lifelike clarity, but music soars as the men depart for war in chapter two, finding plenty of width and depth alike. Score holds firm with good clarity and spacing throughout the film. Wartime sound effects are always potent and what they lack in absolute clarity they more than make up for in raw muscle. Armor rumbles through the streets in chapter three with impressive power and stage saturation. A battle around the 90-minute mark lacks absolute clarity but enjoys more than serviceable depth, space, and punch, whether explosions, gunfire, rolling armor, or an airplane zipping from side to side. Environmental ambience is well defined, occasionally remaining more front-heavy than is ideal, but doing well enough to draw the listener into the film. Dialogue is a stalwart with natural front-center placement, good clarity, and seamless prioritization.

Captain Corelli's Mandolin Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Captain Corelli's Mandolin's Blu-ray release contains a music video and a commentary track. No top menu is included; both extras must be accessed in-film via the pop-up menu.

• Music Video (1080i upconverted, 3:47): "Ricordo Ancor (Pelagia's Song)" by Russell Watson.
• Audio Commentary: Director John Madden, with a fairly dry delivery, covers the film in great detail, including discussions of themes, film structure, shooting locations, performances, characters, score, and much more.

Captain Corelli's Mandolin Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Captain Corelli's Mandolin is based on the novel of the same name by Louis de Bernières, but this film adaptation lacks the grace, the nuance, the depth, the firmer character construction, everything that made the novel a beloved work of literature. The film is capable, though it's dragged down by a failure to explore themes in-depth and by lackluster performances. Universal's Blu-ray delivers fairly strong video and audio. Supplements include a dry but informative commentary track. Worth a look.