This film, directed by Italian director Michelangelo Fran Martino, has no dialogue and no plot. Most of the film uses fixed camera positions and long shots to present the true state of things, but it tells a very vivid and interesting story. The story of the universe, the existence and demise of all things in the world are like the curling smoke from the chimney at the end, cruel and gentle.
In a village built on a mountain in southern Italy, there is an old man who shepherds his sheep. Every day he takes his sheep to graze on the grass on the hillside. There are about twenty sheep in the flock, black and white. The ones with horns and those without horns, and a few of the sheep are so old that their hair has lost their luster, and their udders are drooping listlessly. During this slack time, the old man would lean on the white trunk whose bark had fallen off and close his eyes for a while. In the evening he came home with his sheep through a long, lush path. He knew that his time was short, but he was not willing to die, so he went to the church to prolong his life. The dust floating in the old church under the sunlight was revealed, and he used the dust as a panacea. He returned a bottle of goat milk he had just squeezed out and went back. Life on this old man continued as usual, herding sheep, walking, shitting in the fields, taking medicine, sleeping. Even the stones on the ground, the mountains in the distance, and the clouds in the sky did not change. Don't you know that time is a pig-killing knife, and it quietly dissolves life.
The old man died in one afternoon, struggling so weakly. The light was especially bright that day, the sheep filed out of the smashed sheepfold, and some crawled into the old man's room, with a sense of novelty, they would never realize that the old man lying on the bed had fallen asleep. And the people of the town gathered together to bury the old man. But that's all, the sun sets, night falls, the people disperse after the funeral, and the sheep return to the fold as if nothing had happened.
After the old man died, a young sheep was born. The young sheep was white, and when it landed, there were still mixed amniotic fluid and a long umbilical cord. Young sheep grow like other sheep of their kind, and the flock naturally changes owners. In addition to the natural laws of birth, aging, sickness and death, both humans and animals have to face the impermanence of fate. When the little white sheep was out to graze, it was pulled down by the sheep. It howled a few times sadly, and then came to a tree. The tree stood out like a flock of chickens. It was a lot higher than the other trees. Independence in the meadows. The sheep squatted in the sunken pit under the tree, the size was just right, as if the burial place God had prepared for it.
The sky was still clear, and the sheep looked at it, thinking about the world for the last time. I don't know how long it took, at least the corpses of the sheep were gone. People came to this big tree in groups, and when the chainsaw rang, the big tree fell down. The tree was dragged back to the town to "participate in" the ancient sacrificial ceremony, and it stood up again, even with its bare torso, and was even climbed to the top by a man. After the ceremony, the big tree was dismantled into eight pieces, and the white branches were like bones. The good "bones" were used as wood and became the pillars of furniture or houses, while the small "bones" were used as charcoal materials for burning. .
In the charcoal factory, the wood blocks pulled from the small town were piled up, and then a thick layer of coal ash was sprinkled outside, like a huge tomb. When the charcoal fire was put in for a while, the gray-black charcoal was completed. Immediately afterwards, the residents of the town would drive to buy a truckload of charcoal.
The charcoal was thrown into the fireplace, and smoke billows from the chimney on the roof.
The movie ends.
I tried to retell the content of the film, but after all, the text is too boring and abstract, which is not enough for the richness of the image. So next I will analyze the film itself.
One: In terms of theme and plot,
although the movie does not have a plot in the general sense, as I said above, it tells a moving story with a seemingly scattered mirror language. The director's use of the four demise stories is actually talking about the eternity of the world and the reincarnation of life.
The title "Four Times" comes from the theory of the ancient Greek philosopher Pythagoras. 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. And the director is based on such a theory to tell the story of the town.
From people to sheep to trees to charcoal, it corresponds to the four types of people, animals, plants and minerals, and the beginning of the film is the scene of workers making charcoal at the end, so the whole film forms a closed loop, indicating the cycle of all things and the reincarnation of life .
In my opinion, the main reason why the film impresses me comes from its unadorned life-like content. It doesn't tell anything deliberately or create conflicts artificially. Everything happens naturally. And the slow and casual rhythm also makes the audience think about life and the world just like the characters in the film. And some life-like actions can also resonate. For example, in the middle of the film, a child was blocked by a dog while chasing an adult, so he confronted the dog and did not dare to move forward. He seized the opportunity to rush over, and By this time the adults had long since disappeared, so the child ran away crying. These little details remind me of my childhood. Isn't that the case with movies? Isn't that what art is like? Those common complexes are the most moving.
Two: In terms of camera language,
first of all, the biggest feature of this film is that there is no dialogue, and the whole process of natural sound is not only a tribute to the silent film era of the original film, but also reduces the trouble of making subtitles and finding subtitles for Chinese audiences.
You must know that at the beginning of the film, it was a pure art of light and shadow, and it was mainly based on realism and long shots. The silent long-range, panoramic and long shots in this film turned the screen into a window. , the audience is in the window, and the story is in the distance outside the window. In doing so, the film returns to its original nature from two levels of life and art.
Although half a century has passed, as an Italian film, this film can still see the shadow of neo-realism, and the director has also explored and innovated on the film's narrative techniques and camera movement on the basis of realistic aesthetics. This innovation is valuable.
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