Le Quattro Volte (The Four Times)

2010 movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: An old shepherd coughs on his goats. Anything else would spoil the movie!

Shepherd? Goat herder? Can you be called a shepherd if you're not working with sheep? The more movies I watch, the less I seem to know about the world.

By the way, how does one direct a goat? Or a dog? Or a tree? Because I'm pretty sure all those non-humans are being "directed" here.

Michelangelo Frammartino is not a filmmaker with whom I am familiar, but you can tell from this that he doesn't know you're allowed to use music in a movie. The only sound heard in this would be the wind and goat ambiance. Mostly goat ambiance which, I found out, is capable of making me giggle. That lack of sound does include, you should know, any audible dialogue. The goat herder coughs a whole lot, and there's some background chatter (and lots of goat chatter) but none of it must be very important since there are no subtitles provided. There aren't any for the goats either. Or the tree.

So this requires a lot of patience, but you need to pay attention to the smaller details. Otherwise, you're going to miss a trio of flies. You're not going to miss the stand-out scenes--a game of "King of the Hill" with goats, a goat birth, tree hoisting--but you might miss those flies. And those flies are important!

You definitely won't miss the most impressive shot I've seen in a very long time, a Tati-esque look at the little village preparing for some sort of Easter procession thing, the Easter procession thing, dog hijinks, a truck doing a truck thing, and those goats doing some goat things. It's all in an unbroken 8-or-so minute shot that I can't believe was pulled off. It might be the most amazing thing I've ever seen in a movie about goats.

Anyway, I don't want to spoil anything. If you have the patience for a movie like this (it really reminded me a lot of Hukkle if you know that one), see this and explain what it's all about. I thought it was about reincarnation or something. Wikipedia tells me it's about some theory of Pythagoras, but I can't recall triangles being important to this at all.

This is my new favorite movie!