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Verdict: A visually stunning fable for poetically minded movie lovers.

Details: Starring Tim Roth. Directed by Giuseppe Tornatore. Rated R for profanity. 2 hours.

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Review: There are moments so remarkable in "The Legend of 1900" that they more than make up for the movie's narrative excesses. One such moment occurs early in the film. As Max (Pruitt Taylor Vince), our down-and-out narrator who once played trumpet aboard a luxury liner, recalls, "It was always one guy alone. He'd see her first and he'd just stand there, his heart racing and every damn time he'd turn to the ship and scream 'America!' "

And as Max speaks, we see on screen a giant ocean liner named the Virginia, filled to the brim with cheering turn-of-the-century immigrants, passing under the fog-enshrouded gaze of the Statue of Liberty. The juxtaposition is so breathtakingly over the top that, for a brief moment, cynicism seeps through and you wonder whether Barbra Streisand is spread-eagled on the prow, a la "Funny Girl." But then you give in to the sheer operatic audacity of the shot. That's the kind of movie this is, and if you're not romantic enough to take it, best take a pass.

This is the first English-language film for Italian director Giuseppe Tornatore, who had such a success stateside with his "Cinema Paradiso." Tornatore calls his movie a "poetic fable," and it's so unabashedly emotional, so lushly overdone (even with a good half-hour dropped for the U.S. release), that you have to think subtitles might've helped. But the director has the confidence of his countryman, Sergio Leone. Max could be speaking for Tornatore when he says, "You're never really done for as long as you've got a good story and somebody to tell it to."

And "Legend" is one heck of a good story. It begins in the year 1900. A genial stoker (Bill Nunn) on the Virginian finds an abandoned baby in the ship's ballroom. Naming him after the year — hence the off-kilter title — he raises him aboard ship. Officially, the lad doesn't exist; he's an ocean-born being, a fact that will shape his entire life.

This 1900 grows up to be a piano prodigy (Tim Roth) whose talent is so prodigious that no less than jazz legend Jelly Roll Morton (a peacock-perfect Clarence Williams III) challenges him to a piano duel (like the Statue of Liberty scene, it's another of the film's astonishing set pieces).

On board the Virginian, anything seems possible for 1900. He has his music. He has an enthralled audience every crossing. He has friends like Max, who joins the ship's band. What he doesn't have is the ability to set foot on land. He is a true creature of the sea — apart, disconnected, viewing life from the safety of a piano bench or a ship's deck. In some ways he's as sadly isolated as Quasimodo perched among Notre Dame's spires.

Nothing can get him to leave. Not Max's entreaties. Not a record producer's offers of fame and fortune. Not even an enigmatic, beautiful girl who represents all the promise of the unknown. The ship begins as 1900's floating cradle and ends, metaphorically and more, as his floating crypt.

Not given much in the way of dialogue or character, Roth goes for a kind of sober Stan Laurel impersonation — a genial but impossible-to-read innocent. Vince handles the often overripe narration with conviction and a kind of Depression-era panache. But for the most part, this is a movie about dreams and images and choices. In one haunting sequence, a poor steerage passenger who's been buffeted by one tragedy after another encapsulates the optimism essential to the human condition when he tells 1900, "Life is immense. Change life. Start fresh."

How to follow this advice is the movie's central theme. In a sense, "The Legend of 1900" is a film for all of us at sea, seeking the faith and courage to take that first step off the boat.

— Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, Cox News Service

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