These (perhaps overly existential) questions might not immediately come to mind when talking about Big Night<\/em>, a movie about two Italian brothers running a restaurant on the New Jersey shore in the 1950s. Stanley Tucci (who also co-wrote and co-directed) and Tony Shalhoub play numerically named brothers who pour everything they have, literally and figuratively, into their tiny hole in the wall. Their world is small: the women who adore them, the neighbors who befriend them, the fellow Italian immigrants who sympathize with them. They struggle for business, and they struggle in love. They fight with each other, and for each other. \u201cWe all should have a lot we don\u2019t have,\u201d Tucci\u2019s Secondo says with both wistfulness and resentment, and Big Night<\/em> bravely admits that wearing your heart on your sleeve might be a vulnerability instead of an asset. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Instead, Big Night<\/em> insists that staying true to yourself is simultaneously an impossible way to live and the only <\/em>way to live, and that kind of rigidity does not allow for a happy ending. It can garner respect and admiration, but also financial ruin. Perhaps there is a dangerous kind of romanticization here, and a rejection of the practicality we might need to survive. But Big Night<\/em> is unyielding in its commitment to the idea that doing things the right way\u2014with honor, and patience, and attention, and intention\u2014is worth doing<\/em>. And what the film provides, with bittersweet melancholy, is moments of grace and solidarity between two brothers who are very different in personality and mannerisms, but whose affection for the cuisine of their homeland is only rivaled by their feelings for each other. That\u2019s as pure as Italy\u2019s best extra virgin olive oil<\/a>. That\u2019s as rare as bucatini<\/a>. That\u2019s the good stuff. <\/p>\n\n\n\n *<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIf I sacrifice my work, it dies. It\u2019s better that I die.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n When Tucci made Big Night<\/em>, he was tired of the roles he\u2019d been cast in over a decade or so of work: wise guys, assassins, and baddies, some of which tapped into the worst stereotypes and cliches of how others viewed his Italian-American identity. As he told The Washington Post<\/em>\u2019s Sharon Waxman in 1998<\/a> while promoting his second directorial effort The Imposters<\/em>, \u201cIt was very frustrating. Most of the time it was just perpetuating the stereotype of the Italian as a gangster guinea.\u201d Does Big Night<\/em> indulge in some stereotypes of its own? Maybe. The Italian men are hot-headed, the women sensual, the food traditional, the Americans uncultured. But Big Night<\/em> approaches all this from a place of openness, with the warmth of an invitation\u2014like an ajar restaurant door, beckoning people inside. <\/p>\n\n\n\n That restaurant is Paradise, a slightly shabby but neatly decorated restaurant on a quiet street on the New Jersey shore, run by brothers Primo (Shalhoub), a gifted, perfectionist chef, and Secondo (Tucci), the charming restaurant manager. The kitchen is small, with mismatched shelving, hanging pots and pans, and weighty wooden prep tables; the dining room is small, with crisp white linens, gifted paintings on the wall, and a satisfyingly stocked bar. It\u2019s a short walk to the sand and the water out the back, and a short walk to the restaurant\u2019s bustling competitor, Pascal\u2019s, out the front. Cinematographer Ken Kelsch roams around Pascal\u2019s, panning across the dining room packed with Americans listening to lounge singers, digging into spaghetti and meatballs, and being entertained by owner Pascal\u2019s (Ian Holm) foul-mouthed glad handing. And every night, only a couple dozen steps away, Paradise sits empty. <\/p>\n\n\n\n When the restaurant\u2019s few diners critique the food for not being the Americanized dishes they expect, Primo threatens to fight them, Secondo smooths over disagreements, waiter Cristiano (Marc Anthony) hovers between the brothers, and Paradise loses money. It\u2019s been like this for two years, and the bank is no longer extending the brothers\u2019 loan. But Secondo, so used to hiding the realities of life from the more sensitive Primo, can\u2019t accept that their American dream could be over so soon. So he reaches out to Pascal for help, assuming that a fellow Italian immigrant would be an ally. While Pascal refuses to lend the brothers any money, he offers something else: What if Pascal\u2019s friend, popular Italian-American jazz musician Louis Prima, and his band were to eat at Paradise instead?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s the land of fucking opportunity,\u201d Pascal says of America with a wide\u2014bordering on leering\u2014grin, and his treatment of the brothers is almost covetous. He praises Secondo for how good the man looks with his slicked-back hair, his broad shoulders, and his nicely fitted suit; he keeps trying to bite him. He praises Primo for his development of flavors, for his understanding of the guiding principles of Italian cuisine, and for how religiously he sticks to the family recipes the brothers brought over from Italy; he does not, however, try to bite Primo. Pascal displays more interest, and avarice, toward the brothers than he does toward his own wife, the gorgeous, bored Gabriella (Isabella Rossellini), and Tucci and co-director Campbell Scott offer a clue about Pascal when they shoot him in his office, a lamp blocking his face, obliterating his expressions. Who is Pascal, past a vague outline of a man? What does he stand for, or believe in? Not much. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The brothers trust him, and that\u2019s one mistake. Interpersonal relationships are not their strength. Secondo keeps pushing off proposing to his girlfriend Phyllis (Minnie Driver), while Primo can barely work up the nerve to speak to his crush, florist Ann (Allison Janney). In this fantastic ensemble, everyone is at the top of their game. Tucci and Driver are all pent-up desire and high-strung energy, bouncing their bodies against each other in longing in the back of Secondo\u2019s car and in frustration in the restaurant kitchen, while Shalhoub and Janney are gentler, more tentative, and quirkier, like when Primo climbs into a glass display to examine Ann\u2019s flowers. (Not a euphemism.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n Outside of the kitchen or the restaurant, the brothers are a little bit messy and a little bit lost. But their pride\u2014they won\u2019t let go of that. Tucci\u2019s line delivery and demeanor exude crisp indignation when Secondo says \u201cI speak English\u201d to a bank manager refusing to extend their credit. \u201cDo you know what goes on in that man\u2019s restaurant every night? Rape! Rape! The rape of cuisine!\u201d Primo yells when Secondo talks about the hubbub at Pascal\u2019s, Shalhoub\u2019s stiff body language mirroring his unwavering opinions about food. Perhaps the brothers are inflexible, and perhaps they are melodramatic. But if we lose our dignity, what do we have? Who are we? Or, more importantly: Who aren\u2019t<\/em> we? <\/p>\n\n\n\n *<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cTell me. What, exactly, are you?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n On the one hand, the few days that Big Night<\/em> chronicles could be taken, at their face, as a portrait of life\u2019s lusty appetites. There is a lot of pining, and a lot of kissing, and a lot of smoking, and a lot of drinking, and\u2014of course!\u2014a lot of eating. For The<\/em> New York Times<\/em>, Claudia Rowe called Big Night<\/em> a \u201cfood-orgy film<\/a>.\u201d In The Washington Post<\/em>, Rita Kempley mentioned the film\u2019s \u201cRomanesque banquet<\/a>.\u201d And to be sure, the film\u2019s penultimate act uses intertitles to break up the luscious, practically lascivious, array of courses that comprise the titular night\u2019s final meal: \u201cLa Zuppa,\u201d the soup; \u201cI Primi,\u201d the first; \u201cI Secondi,\u201d the second; \u201cI Dolci,\u201d the sweet. Chicken soup; roast fish and vegetables; a suckling pig crisp and crackling; tomatoes raw, roasted, sauteed, sauced. Platter after platter, dish after dish, course after course. (No wonder Tucci opened a restaurant<\/a> a few years later, or has since written<\/a> two cookbooks and a food-focused memoir.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the winningness of that final meal is not just its bounty, or its quantity. It is in the togetherness it provides for the people who gather at Paradise\u2019s table, and who join Primo, Secondo, and Cristiano, and who understand a little bit more about who those men are by eating their food. The most beautiful scenes in Big Night<\/em> are the silent ones, the ones that capture the dance the three men do in the kitchen\u2014routines informed by practice, experience, and time. Primo and Secondo moving between the prep tables and the gas range, stirring pots, shaking pans, lifting lids, tasting sauces, adjusting as they go, communicating with each other by glances and looks and intuition. (Tucci simultaneously tossing two pans of onions and grapes, one in each hand, serves as an introduction to the thirst-inspiring confidence of his recent Instagram cocktail videos<\/a>.) The dialogue-less joy at the table as the diners are served: the smiles inspired by the brothers\u2019 timpano<\/em> pasta, hands thrown in the air and fingers pinched together in delight, sighs of satisfied fullness from each diner. When the meal wraps up at 3 a.m.\u2014with Louis Prima never having arrived\u2014the restaurant looks like a war zone, and the brothers\u2019 friends, neighbors, and diners all look like shell-shocked survivors. \u201cIt was the best, ever,\u201d they agree, and they\u2019ll never experience the likes of it again. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Because the brothers were lied to about Prima (Pascal\u2019s \u201cI am a businessman. I am anything I need to be at any time\u201d puts him alongside Eastern Promises<\/em>\u2019s Semyon and The Wire<\/em>\u2019s the Greek as Very Bad Capitalists), and the brothers are out of money, and the brothers\u2019 American dream is over. As they wrestle and fight each other on the beach behind their now-failed restaurant, their traded accusations of betrayal and selfishness seem like a permanent severing. After crossing over from the if <\/em>to the when<\/em> of losing our dignity, who are we? Who are Primo and Secondo now?<\/p>\n\n\n\n It seems like whoever they\u2019ll be, they\u2019ll do it alone\u2014until Big Night<\/em> ends with a scene so simple, so humane, and so beautiful that it underscores the sharing quality of food as its most important quality. Not its complexity, nor its gluttony, but its capability for spiritual sustenance. A few hours after the brothers\u2019 fight, after the sun has barely risen in the sky, Secondo walks back to the restaurant to see Cristiano asleep on the kitchen\u2019s prep table. Primo is nowhere to be found. Efficiently, methodically, Secondo cracks three eggs into a bowl. He seasons them, and he whisks them together. When Cristiano reaches to help, Secondo rebuffs him: \u201cI\u2019ll do it.\u201d He pours olive oil into a frying pan, he turns the range on, he pours the eggs in, he aggressively stirs them around and lets them set, he gathers two plates and two sets of cutlery, he sets the table\u2014all of this happening in real time as the camera barely moves\u2014he flips the omelet, he takes bread from the basket that Cristiano has retrieved, he puts a slice of bread on each plate, he puts an egg on each plate, he leaves one egg in the pan, and he and Cristiano begin to eat. And then, as the two are midbite, Primo appears. Another plate is fetched. The remaining egg and remaining bread are put on it. Cristiano steps out, leaving the brothers alone. And in silence, and in apology, and in camaraderie, Secondo rubs Primo\u2019s arm, and Primo puts his arm around Secondo\u2019s shoulders. They hold each other while they eat the simplest meal Big Night<\/em> offers, and it matters because they do it together. Whatever happens next, happens next. But in that moment, Big Night<\/em>\u2019s emphasis on tradition, integrity, and love is as authentic as that timpano<\/em> recipe. Some things matter more than money, and some paradises are found in failure.\u00a0 Big Night is available for free on PlutoTV<\/a> and is streaming on Paramount+<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Stanley Tucci and Campbell Scott\u2019s familial drama, released 25 years ago this week, is so much more than a food movie.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":582,"featured_media":17159,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1399,1428],"tags":[1429,1422],"class_list":["post-17157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-looking-back","category-happy-birthday","tag-happy-birthday","tag-looking-back"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/582"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17157"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17157\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22180,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17157\/revisions\/22180"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/big-night2-1024x576.jpg\")
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