LE QUATTRO VOLTE

Italy, 2008, 78 minutes, Colour,
Directed by Michelangelo Frammartino.

Some years ago there was a French documentary about life on a farming property in the French mountains called La Vie Moderne/ Modern Life. A director met a family and followed them in their ordinary lives and in their work, often letting what the audience was watching speak for itself – though sometimes the makers asked questions which required an answer of yes or no which, when given, made them sound more inarticulate than they probably were.

Le Quattro Volte is in the same vein except that the film-makers tend to keep their distance, even in close-up sequences. There is practically no dialogue (though we do hear a soldier in Roman dress for a Passion Play procession telling the local dog to scat: ‘Via!). And no questions are asked of the people we see and watch.

Looking at some reviews and blogs, I realised that many viewers were bored, finding the whole thing tedious. But, the film is a cinema essay, with documentary touches and with poetic touches. And, if that does not appeal, tedium ensues. But, if it does, the film is a quiet immersion in the life of a small, mountainous Calabrian town.

For most of the first half of the film, we accompany a lonely goatherd, for whom no jaunty song will be sung. He roams the paths in the woods and the goats graze on the hillsides. He takes them home, milks them in the morning and distributes the milk. We go to his room, a rather monastic room. He visits the church and gets some dust which he stirs into his drink, hoping for some kind of cure or healing (he never tells us). He dies. He is buried – and, later, one of the goats gives birth. Clearly, the audience is invited to watch, to contemplate, to reflect.

We see people arriving for the Passion Play, the procession itself with Jesus and the Cross and the Roman soldiers, the townspeople following on to a distant hill up the road where we can discern three crosses.

There is also a local festival. A tall tree is raised in the square. Someone climbs it and gifts fall out of the tree. The tree comes down, is chopped into pieces. Some of the men of the town are involved in charcoal making and we watch and contemplate the process as they form the wood into huge smouldering mounds.

And, the contemplation ends. We have been visual tourists in the town, gazing down at it, admiring the views of the surrounding hills – and, depending on whether we responded well or not, that is that.