Poor

I agree with you woowickerwacker. I saw the film with two other foreign film lovers and we all felt it was dull. The problems we had with the film were......

The story line. If you want to “ talk” philosophy then talk about it. Like “My Dinner with Andre” for example. If you want to instead “show” it. Then my God, please show us more than this pap to explain such a heavy topic as the transmigration of souls. The screenwriter was just plain lazy.

The long “contemplate this” shots were too long and too often. I recognize that they are often necessary to set the mood (see “Meek’s Cutoff”) . But I also recognize when someone has a “short” that he’s trying to stretch into a feature length film.

Too much camera angle from high above the street. Could not hardly see the objects they were trying to show us (the dog, the little girl, etc.) And they used that repeatedly. Also, couldn’t we see the faces of some of the other people please? I became familiar with more faces of goats than people.

The advertisements said that it won the Best European Film category at Cannes. If that’s true then you guys in Europe need to eat meat more often.

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I sort of agree.

Towards the end I was wondering - apparently all it takes in this day and age (and place, being the European intellectual cinemascape) to win prizes and a >7 IMDB rating is a high-def camera, tripod and a random backwater european village to film a disjointed series of still shots in.

1/10

- don't worry that's just my signature.

I like slow and meditative films as much as anyone (I love Terrence Malick's work) but this movie was beyond dull.

Only boring for the easily bored. Obviously not your kind of movie.

In a wonderful piece for Sight & Sound magazine, Jonathan Romney quotes Frammartino’s suggestion that Le Quattro Volte is about animism and the transmigration of souls:



“The film is based on the ideas of animism and reincarnation, and Calabria is very much a animist region. Pythagoras supposedly said that each of us holds within us four successive lives, each one enmeshed in the others. Man is made of mineral, because he has a skeleton; he’s a plant because he has blood flowing through his veins like sap; he’s an animal, because he has morbidity; and he’s also a rational being. So in order to understand himself, man has to understand himself four times’” – Sight & Sound Vol 21, Issue 6, pp. 44

Duller than ditchwater. I agree.

Unfortunately, like the main character in this movie, most aspects of Italian culture have turned from being a vibrant, effervescent, exuberant, colorful flower to being a withered, tired old man picking olives (or herding goats) and awaiting death. Accordingly, whenever I watch an Italian movie I feel as if the director is saying 'I have nothing to prove'. This is in stark contrast to movies being produced in other countries in our time. The movie is extremely listless. It lacks interest and it lacks energy. The sense of active, directed effort is altogether missing. That is really disappointing. I don't mind seeing 'pretentious' movies but I do expect them to be executed with skill. If a man can make a bolognese sauce it doesn't mean he is a chef. A clove of garlic grown in Italian soil is not better simply because it is Italian. A restaurant couldn't take such things for granted, and neither can a movie director. The majority of scenes in this movie are overexposed, perhaps just to make the movie drag on for longer. Unfortunately most of the scenes are very uninteresting indeed.

If I ever had a chance to speak to the director I would point out that the art of photography is different from the art of cinematography. In photographic art, the viewer contemplates the angle and separates foreground items from background. But shooting a film, you need to show dynamism -a sense of movement. Grains swaying in the breeze simply don't cut it. I'm afraid I have to give this movie a thumbs-down. A big waste of time.