1978 farming movie
Rating: 18/20
Plot: People live on a farm.
This movie taught me what chilblains are.
"Paradise beings with the love we show each other on earth."
Two movies in a row where the idea of paradise comes up. There's a whole lot more God in this one, however, and the faith that comes with there being a whole lot of God in a place like this. What else do these characters have to do but worship something? Tell stories, I guess.
The idea of community comes up a lot in this. This involves four (I think?) families working on somebody else's farm. Maybe it's Maggie's farm, but it's clear they're not like Dylan. They want to be there. It's the place for them. And a big part of that place is the other people who are there. And part of what makes it all work is how they co-exist and help each other. At one point, a character seems confused by a proffered thank you, saying, "Thank us for what? If we don't help each other. . ." and later, a nun brings up the idea yet again, claiming, "We must help each other in this world." Along with the above quote and many moments, some very quiet and inconspicuous, where characters have each other's back, pray for each other, and watch over each other, that theme is very clear.
This movie is long and almost entirely plotless, just slices of the lives of these people who work and work and work. Small victories seem momentous. Witness the grandfather character and his tomatoes, a subplot that is sprinkled in here and there throughout this. We see the guy sneaking around at night with a bucket of chicken shit, we see him talking with his granddaughter about his intentions, and then we see the emotional payoff of all that. It's a hushed firecracker of a moment, and I can see a lot of people watching this and being bored and frustrated, but if you're engaged, you'll pick up on lots of those kinds of moments.
Clogs, by the way, don't factor into this whole thing until around the hour-and-five-minute mark and then dropped again until almost the very end of the movie. It's just one short story of many in this, one tragedy that surely isn't the first and won't be the last because life for these people is all about embracing the routine and, whenever tragedy does arrive like a sinister visitor, figure out a way to move on. Most of those ways, of course, have to do with God or working with others.
There are moments of levity. A carnival rolls into town, giving these people an opportunity to break that routine in non-tragic ways. You know, the typical eating thirty-six eggs and drinking ten literal bootfuls of wine or having dangerous-looking pole-climbing competitions or riding a carousel in the vicinity of clowns or listening to a guy talk about his arthritis ointments. Most of their lives, however, there's a music that always seems just out of reach of these people. When nuns enter the picture later on, one talks about how the nuns are singing because the world needs to be beautiful. These characters live in a beautiful place, but it's not an easy life. It's the kind of life where you have to decapitate geese which might bite or listen to those horrifying pig screams before those piggish intestines spill out. These characters hear music, but it's always out of reach.
Of course, one of them does this peasant freestyle rap which is something else. Rap music was invented in late-19th Century Italy apparently.
One other stand-out scene involves newlyweds on a lengthy boat trip. Director Olmi really takes his time with this, but he then skips the sex scene. I have to admit that I was a little disappointed.
Oh, one other moment that stands out and nearly made me tear up is a decision by an oldest sibling when his mother suggests they get rid of a brother and sister. That touched me.
This apparently one of Al Pacino's favorite movies.
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