four times of the soul

Dylan 2022-03-04 08:01:30

The title "Four Times" comes from the theory of Pythagoras, an ancient Greek philosopher who lived in Calabria in the 6th century BC. Pythix believed that the soul is immortal, reborn in a cycle of four life forms - animals, plants, minerals and people. That is, there is inner soul equality among all living beings. The 42-year-old former architect Michelangelo Fran Martino used this theory of the cycle of the soul to describe life in a mountain village in today's Calabria region.

The first quarter of the film focuses on the aging shepherd: day after day, he cares for the flock, delivers goat milk, soaks the dust collected from the church sweeping to cure his cough...until one day he quietly dies. The most dramatic scene in the whole film is when the old man is dying, the shepherd picks up the stopper used to stabilize the car parked on the slope, so the car slowly slides into the sheepfold and breaks the fence. The goats fled one after another, but did not go far. Most of them gathered at the door of the shepherd's house, and some went into the room to pay attention to the sick old man in bed. The camera perspective shifts again between the old man and the goat, showing the communication between them. The sheep silently watched the villagers take care of the old man's funeral, and the human went to the background. The sheep became the protagonist and watched all human behaviors.

Not long after the old man passed away, a lamb was born in the flock. It escaped from the flock during a grazing, went astray, and froze to death under a tall cedar tree. During the winter festival not long after, the cedar tree was cut down and used for religious ceremonies in the village. After the ceremony, the charcoal workers dragged the tree to Hebei and used the primitive method to make the tree into charcoal. That's how the movie ends.

If the ignorant audience does not have the patience to watch the first shepherd passage, thinking that this is a bland naturalistic documentary, they will miss the following wonderful. There is no dialogue or music in the whole film, but the well-designed ambient sound, the language of the camera, and the joint performance of non-professional human actors and animals are amazing. The concepts of soul cycle, life form transformation and equality of beings are expressed entirely through the language of the lens. In the section of the religious gathering, the shepherd dog barks and entangles at passersby, and the sheep are the silent audience, but when all passersby leave the frame and the crowd is gone, the camera still follows the dog back and forth aimlessly. In this long paragraph, the film's "protagonist" shepherd is absent for a long time, and perhaps agitated audiences will think that the film is out of control. It was not until the death of the old man that the focus of the narrative shifted to answer the previous "playing" of the camera with the audience.

The greatest joy in watching this movie lies in giving up the viewing experience trained by narrative movies or exposition documentaries. If the audience can give up narrative expectations and master the initiative of the "storyline", and let the camera lens lead into the universe without any dependence, can Experience the surprise that the viewing experience and routine are constantly being broken. There are four protagonists in this film: the shepherd, the little goat, the fir tree, and the charcoal. None of them dominate, but all four are equal and sentient beings. What is commendable is that the animals acting as actors are not computer effects, and the real performance maintains the philosophical issue about the existence of life that it wants to express.

Churches, crosses, religious ceremonies, and even life-size biblical story dolls appear in the film repeatedly. But these religious traces should all be seen as compliant signs reminding spiritual existence, not representations of specific religious authority. It seems that the time running in this small Italian mountain village is not the time of human society, but the natural time of the universe. The space is filled with equal and harmonious souls, and people are only a part of it.

The film won the European Film Label Award at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival. Despite this reputation, if the audience can't keep their minds humble, and can't have the courage to overthrow their human-centered worldview and the perspective of appreciating the world, they will not be able to appreciate the beauty of this movie. When I was watching this movie in the movie theater, the man next to me was drinking red wine and texting on his iPhone. He fell asleep and snored to the sound of thunder in the movie. After waking up, he continued to drink wine and send text messages. Part of the exit, back to the world of feasting and feasting outside the theater.

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