In the northern countryside of Italy at the end of the nineteenth century, several households were hired farmers who cultivated the land for farmers. The face of their daily life is like an uninterrupted river and four seasons. Under the river, there are weeds, rocks, and soil. Like poor life itself, if water is to flow uninterruptedly, it must withstand the weather, cold and warmth, frost, cold and heat tenaciously, and must bear the sudden changes and burdens of fate anytime and anywhere.
This is a story that cannot be told. There is no turbulent plot, no glorious protagonist, no climax conflict, or even ups and downs. The expression method of the "flow of life", all the people who are followed by the camera, men, women, the elderly, and children, are the protagonists. Together, they paint a picture of a group of farmers with typical characteristics. Their daily production, labor, conversation, care, and daily worries, joy, distress, and beliefs naturally interweave each other. Like the breeze and the woods, the heavy snow and the land, all intertwined are the details and appearances of life. But it is within these non-dramatic details that powerful, understanding and respect for life, life, destiny, and beliefs are revealed bit by bit, unstoppably.
Throughout the movie, there is no resentment, complaint, or unrestrained enthusiasm or excitement. From beginning to end, I didn't see a single person crying. Even the mother who had to send her child to the orphanage because of poverty; even the child who wore out shoes and went home barefoot in the cold winter. Similarly, I did not see tears of joy. Face the father of a newborn child, or a newlywed couple who loves each other. Everyone has a kind of calmness. A calm attitude without shyness. This may be the real life. The real life attitude is to flow smoothly and naturally, without being excited and whistling at every turn. The ordinary days that accumulate every day, no matter how hard or intolerable, actually have its own background. The color of this foundation is thickly painted on the wall of life with courage, commitment, understanding and dignity.
A narrative work in a purely documentary style. It can also be regarded as an epic. It is not the kind of epic that we are usually familiar with, but the history of daily life of ordinary people. Of these two epics, the former changes history and corroborates history. The latter is history itself, it is difficult to record, but it surpasses the record. It's hidden, broad, and more pure and essential thinking and respect for the life itself, which will give the work a deep and steady sense of power. This is the great realism. The Italian director Elmano Olmi's "Wooden Shoe Tree" filmed in 1978 has once again proven without exaggeration that there is a shocking poetic beauty in ordinary life.
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