Le quattro volte 2010

Michelangelo Frammartino’s ode to the cycles of nature applies a wryly detached ‘documentary’ eye to what is in fact a meticulously staged and richly loaded drama – in which some of the principal actors are mineral, vegetable and animal. Here humanity is no longer at the centre of the universe, simply part of its mysterious process: we see a mighty tree accorded more ceremony in death than a superstitious old man. Frammartino’s eye on the animal world is little short of miraculous. He holds us enthralled by the territorial contests of baby goats – and, in a shot that will live forever in cinema history, floors us with the intervention in human affairs of a dog. This mutt’s seamless execution of an elaborately choreographed gag makes up for the lack of a Buster Keaton comedy on this year’s programme. — BG

“Le quattro volte, an idiosyncratic and amazing new film… is so full of surprises – nearly every shot contains a revelation, sneaky or overt, cosmic or mundane – that even to describe it is to risk giving something away… In four chapters… Mr Frammartino successively chronicles the earthly transit and material transmutation of an old man, a young goat, a tree and a batch of charcoal. Each being or thing is examined with such care and wit that you become engrossed in the moment-to-moment flow of cinematic prose, only at the end grasping the epic scope and lyrical depth of what you have seen, which is more or less all of creation.” — A.O. Scott, NY Times