I've been wondering...Did Pablo Neruda really befriend a man named Mario Ruoppolo while he was living in Italy? Or is this just a made up story?
shareThink forest gump
shareThe original novel the movie is based on places the action on a South American island.
Tu sei la prima donna del primo giorno della creazione.
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Forrest Gump is a simpleton who reacts and responds to changing events but isn't himself changed by them. He doesn't grow, either emotionally or intellectually. In contrast Mario Ruoppolo only needs the 'education' that Pablo Neruda provides for him to inspire a transformation in the way he sees and responds to the world. Forrest Gump seems to me more a film about the events going on in the background than a film about Gump himself, or human relationships. Il Postino by contrast film is about Mario's personal journey, and about how that plays out in the relationships he has with Neruda, Beatrice and the other people of his village. To signify how far he has travelled, by the end of the film he is prepared to recite his own poetry to a large Communist party rally.I think you've said it quite eloquently. I just finished watching it. It made me cry, it was so beautiful.
To be honest, Forrest Gump is the last film I think of when I'm watching Il Postino.
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The original post asks whether this film is a true story and neoblackdragon responds "Think Forrest Gump" and I think what they mean is in relation to the factuality of the film; not a comparison between the actual characters.
Forrest Gump was a fictional tale featuring a made-up character but involving real events. At least I think that's what was implied by saying, "Think Forrest Gump".
I remember seeing a documentry or film on a PBS type station in the early 80s.It was about a mailman that would bring a poet living by the sea his mail.When this film cameout my first thought was this was a remake of that or based on that story.
Neruda lived some time in Italy in the early 1950´s after the Communist Party was banned in Chile in 1948,but the novel is set in Isla Negra(that despite it´s name is not an island but a little seaside town in central Chile where Neruda had a house) in the late 1960´s and some real life based friendship with the local postman
shareIt is based on the novel "Il Postino" by Chilean author Antonio Skarmeta, originally written in Spanish. Although not based on a true story, the author had spent time at Isla Negra with Neruda interviewing him for a magazine article. Isla Negra is about an hour south of Valparaíso on the Pacific Coast, and is not an Island but the name of Neruda´s house.
shareSkármeta's novel is actually called "Ardiente Pacienca," translated into English as "Burning Patience." I remember it as a beautiful and heartbreaking short novel, set against the Allende presidency and the rise of Pinochet and the "disappearances" in Chile. Incidentally, Skármeta himself adapted his novel into a film in 1983: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085179/.
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I should warn you -- he's a Fourierist.
nxtec,
The trivia says 'Il Postino' is a remake of a film made in the early 1980s, so maybe that is what you remember. Interesting.
It's loosely based on some real events that occured to Neruda during his life. But most part of it it's merely product of the wonderful and poetical pen of Antonio Skarmeta.