“BROKEN HALOS” by Michael Kampa

“Broken Halos” is a film that leaves no way out. From the first minutes, we are drawn into a mysterious, suggestive and fascinating atmosphere, which seems to envelop us from behind like a gust of cold wind. The merit is certainly the script: starting from the first bars, it establishes a narrative rhythm that never decreases, perfectly balanced and sensitive to the emotional variations of the story. But there is more. Michael Kampa’s film is a brave film, which is not afraid to confront the genre cinematography and draw its own artistic conclusions. The film’s register seems to jump from one genre to another without ever making mistakes, always following a narrative coherence capable of creating a product with a very strong identity. Because Kampa exploits genre cinema in the best way: within a story with strong entertaining skills there is a lot of humanity and deep and personal reflections on themes such as love, memory, loss. The spectacular and exciting journey of “Broken Halos” is not empty fun. It is the refined reworking of universal concepts, which find their place here without weighing down the narrative. This film reaches its full identity thanks also to an incredible and suggestive aesthetic. The obsessive care for the staging, the beautiful and articulated work of cinematography, make this film incredibly broad: the narration is reflected in the lights and visual suggestions, increasing the emotional reach of the story. It is not only beautiful, it is significant. In this period in which the decline of the stylistic form is accentuated, it is important that there are films like this to reaffirm the fundamental value of the form-content combination.
“Broken Halos” doesn’t miss a beat, the result is excellent. Excellent all the departments and the interpretation of the protagonist.