Review of Le Quattro Volte

Anaxagoras believed in the transmigration of the soul, whilst Pythagoras held that the soul had three sides--the ethereal, the luminous and the terrestrial. in Frammartino's 'le quattro volte' in a way is a misnomer. Although he depicts four phases, his film remains planted firmly on Mother Earth, in animal, vegetable and the mineral. Shot in long view, everything takes place in a village in Calabria, a Calabria unchanged in habit since it seems time immemorial, notwithstanding modern trappings. It seems as though there things are no more than a repetition of learned habits. It would be well for the film goer to see the monotony of life as presented in Carlo Levi's 'Christ stopped at Eboli', also in Calabria. They rhythm of nature continues: the goat herder who dies, the kid dropped by its mother goat, the massive fir tree resplendent in the snow, then cut down for a village festival (as a May pole?), and then cut up and put to flames so that out of its death comes charcoal for heating, for commerce and for other uses. There is a timeless beauty nonetheless that Frammatino's camera capture,as it documents the utter sameness of a slice of peasant life that lingers, in the annual cycle of the seasons, endlessly repeated.