Frammartino's Calabrian soul

2010 New York Film Festival
Film Society of Lincoln Center


Le quattro volte (written/directed by Michelangelo Frammartino) Italy/Germany/France. 2010. 88 minutes. Lorber Films

Without dialogue but with sense-filling imagery and sound, Michelangelo Frammartino (writer/director) traces the movement of soul within earthly matter as represented by his rural ancestral home, Calabria, across four seasons. Human, animal, vegetable, mineral: These divisions are also the "four turns" of the title and the four profound, interconnected elements of Calabrian tradition and practical survival.

The film opens as smoke wafts from holes in a black cone of charcoal erected and tended by carbonai (coal men), launching intertwined cycles of cause and effect. As the film progresses, the significance of this cone will become clear, and Frammartino returns to it near the end, showing the careful process of its construction and use. In between, we observe the stark, everyday flow of life in a Calabrian hill village where an aged, ailing goatherd (Giuseppe Fuda) lives by himself and tends his adorable charges. He also tends a persistent cough in a traditional way by ingesting blessed packets of dust swept from a church floor.

The goatherd serves as Frammartino's primary human focus. (The closeups of Fuda's face and hands and the few humble belongings in his home would have inspired van Gogh.) But sometimes I also felt as if I were getting down in the muck with the wonderful goats and their kids. We visit and revisit the Calabrian landscape, the film's rhythms returning us to certain views in differing lighting or times of year, as if we're perched on a higher hill looking out across the soft expanse. In most of the village scenes, we gaze downward as if standing atop the highest roof or floating above a road. The few verbal exchanges between villagers sound muffled. Distinct words are not as important as meaning; being human, we understand well enough. Frammartino lets clanging goat bells, rustling wind, a barking dog, jubilant villagers and growling chain saws tell the story and mark time's passage.

Despite the distancing viewpoints and Frammartino's unusually intense attention to the non-human elements in his film, Le quattro volte carries a strong emotional charge. You watch it, you feel, you care.

Read Michelangelo Frammartino's synopsis and intention.

Public screening: Sunday, September 26, 3pm

Alice Tully Hall, 65th Street (between Broadway and Amsterdam), Manhattan

Information and ticketing

Complete NYFF information (September 24-October 10)