So good it's thrilling.

Although it spins in circles for too long before its climactic wheat-field shoot out, no other Taviani brothers film so vividly captures the prevailing ethos of their life's work: "Living may be tragic," Vittorio once said, "but life isn't."

It's beautiful film, but it's a disappointment, a series of scenes in which peasants to wartime Italy seem to be posing for heroic post office murals.

It's a bit long-winded, melodramatic, and meandering. Still, like a verismo opera, it sweeps us along, leaving us as forlorn as Galvano when the world returns to normal.