User Reviews

An elderly shepherd living in a hilltop village in Italy spends his days tending to his goat herd among the rolling hills passing mounds used to make charcoal, before retiring to bed, drinking a strange powder which we can presume he takes for the hope of relieving some of the symptoms of his illness. Later we learn the powder is dust swept from the church, which he exchanges for goats milk.

As the village prepares for a parade for a saint, the shepherds dog harangues the locals who pass it, barking furiously and eventually causing a small van to crash into the goat pen letting the herd loose through the village as the dog strives to get 'his' job done as the shepherd seems to have slept in. We later discover the man has died. But life goes on and with a nanny goat giving birth the shepherd is perhaps reborn. The white kid stands out among the other young goats that are to start kept in the pen whilst the adults go to graze. Left to their own devices, anything and everything becomes something of intrigue and just like children, the kids investigate all.

Eventually, the kids get to join the adults grazing, but the young white kid gets separated and as the seasons suddenly change, we presume the young goat dies at the base at a vast pine tree. And there the cycle continues as the tree is felled for another celebration in the village. Eventually the tree is cut into pieces and a new mound is made, with the wood placed inside to make a new batch of charcoal. When ready, the charcoal is divvied up and given to the locals.

This exquisite Italian film tells a story of life; it is a slow, yet beguiling film, one that easily can alienate as much as be utterly embraced. The narrative is bare, but there is one and even without dialogue the film has much to say. The beginning with the elderly man sets a slow pace that is broken upon his death. His sheepdog steels the film within the remarkable single camera scene where he tries in vain to draw attention to the fact the shepherd has failed to rise. As locals run from the dog fearing he is just vicious, the dog pulls a rock wedged under the tire of a small van sending it crashing into the goat pen. The control of the dog is superb, brilliantly funny, yet devastating as we realise something must be wrong.

As we progress into the next segment, animals again steal the film as we spend time within the herd of goats. There is something both engrossing and enjoyable watching these animals and the kids are a sheer delight, full of childlike inquisitive and playful, the intimacy in watching them at close quarters is actually quite moving. The later part of the film slows again as the village prepares the tree which then becomes part of the lengthy although fascinating process of making charcoal.

Sprinkled with wonderful humour, such as the scene where the shepherd having taking all precautions to keep them in the pot, returns home to find the snails he collected all over the kitchen having escaped or just the humour of the animals involved. This joy is coupled with almost heartbreaking sadness, the dog striving to do his job without his master or the notion that dust from the church somehow contains a 'holy' ingredient that aides illness. It is a film that will divide audiences, but for a film that really tells a very simple story without doing very much it manages to convey so with profound beauty and emotion.

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The popcorn set at the Multiplex is gonna love this one. I've been looking for something with which to compare it and the closest I can get is Au Hazard Balthazar which did for donkeys what this film does for goats. It would have you believe that it is complex as a snowflake yet simple as breathing, touching on several themes, not least reincarnation, the cyclical nature of life, the ultimate triumph of nature over mankind, take your choice. It's like someone moved Walden Pond to Calabria and instead of having Thoreau WRITE down his observation, the camera observed HIM. Of course, as students of American Literature well know, Thoreau cheated; he deliberately fostered the impression that he lived entirely alone at Walden whilst keeping his journal when in reality he was making regular trips into town to buy groceries, chat with the locals, etc. There's no such cheating here, the camera does follow the seasons and the closest thing to a protagonist dies even as a goat is being born. Profound? You tell me.

A work of art like this deserves high praise because of its humanistic, philosophical, ecological, esthetical and,last but not least, entertainment value. With touches of tragedy and comedy alike, it links + blends nature and culture, emotion and reason, life and death, microcosm and universe in a way which is down-to-earth and metaphysical at the same time.

In a highly recommendable bonus interview the director himself speaks of a moment in the film when "the old shepherd (...) is lying in the grass (...) when an ant starts crawling over his face (...) and the man's face, in close-up, becomes a landscape". It could be added that from the point of the ant, the body of the man (who is actually squatting here, not lying) is perfectly interchangeable with a tree, or a boulder .... (By the way, when was the last time you, pooing outdoors, experienced an ant having climbed all the way up to your face ?) Some other shots may remind you of "sculptures" of Andy Goldsworthy ; elsewhere again the viewer is being forced to explore unthought-of inner proceedings or motives within an evidently insignificant long static shot (Kiarostami-like ?); the sequence of charcoal-making has a strongly documentary character as well as (a tiny little bit of) pathos of the bell-casting climax of Tarkovskiy's "Andrey Rublyov"....

As "Le quattro volte" is not a pure documentary, some scenes were obviously staged, such as the sequence depicting the consequences of the shepherd's loss of his medicine, or the glorious Easter shot starring the dog named Vuk ( which means "Wolf" in some South Slavic languages !).

Great blu-ray from Artificial Eye.

The movie observes the four stages of life on the earth as thought by Pythagoras. First, we meet an old shepherd in a rural town in Calabria, Italy. He goes to the wide field on the hills with the goats herded by him everyday. Surrounded by beautiful green mountains seen from the distance, everything is quiet except the wind, the bells attached to his goats, and their constant bleats.

We see him milking one of the goats. We see him going to some house in the town to give something. He goes to the church, where the dust on the church floor is collected, packaged, and given to him by some middle- aged woman. At home where he lives alone, he mixes it with water in bottle and drinks it every night before he sleeps. Even though he does not speak, we can easily surmise that he thinks it is sort of medicine to him. To me, it is more like drinking a batch culture of bacteria, but never mind.

With his minimalistic approach using repeated scenes accompanied with static, unchanged compositions, the director Michelangelo Frammartino shapes the pattern in this slow daily life without much change. From time to time, the camera calmly watches its subjects without movement. Nothing seems to happen at first in its wide shots, but there are small things happening around the screen and our eyes are drawn to them. We get some small information, including where the old man lives, along with the amusement coming from subtle humor. There is a shepherd dog prancing around an old shepherd and his goats, and it has a funny role in the impressive long take sequence where the camera slowly pans back and forth between one point to the other point while observing the progress of the religious ceremony in the town(I learned later it is Easter Procession).

We later see the old man dying on his bed, surrounded by the goats accidentally released from the stable. His funeral is soon followed, and a baby goat is born. Like any newborn kids, it has a sticky beginning right after coming out of its mother's womb. Still covered with mucus, it struggles to stand on the ground with its four feeble legs. It is not so easy at its first trial, but it eventually succeeds, while it looks less sticky than before.

The focus moves from the man to the goats at this stage. After the old man is gone, they, including that kid, are now herded by the other men barely shown to us. The goats look pretty much same at first, but, when the camera looks them closer, you can see the notable differences between them besides the fur colors and the small tags attached to their ears. I especially noticed the various shapes of their horns. Some goats have those horns in smooth shape familiar to us; the other ones have the ones of more curious shapes. Sometimes it looks like they have overgrown the branches on their head.

The life of these animals is not changed much after their previous owner died. As usual, they get out of the stable in the morning and come back later. The kid stays with other kids in the stable, and these young, cute animals get along with each other pretty well. After some time later, they also go out along with the adult goats and see the world outside for the first time. However, the kid gets separated from the herd by accident. Left alone, it wanders around the forest. It finally finds its shelter under some big tree while the darkness falls.

The change of seasons follows. The snow falls in the winter, and then spring returns, and that tree remains in the same place. While watching it, I thought about how much the plants have evolved throughout its long history. Unlike animals, they could not move to more favorable environment, so they had to evolve more diligently for the adaptation to the changing environment they are stuck in from the start. They have quite been successful, while supporting many animal species including us.

After the spring returns, the tree is soon utilized by the town people. They cut it with the chainsaw, skin it, and then bring it to the town. Some town event is held, and the town is livelier than before with many people. For some purpose not explained, they use it as a pole with the branches on the top of it. When the camera watches it from the distance, it looks like a palm tree; a man actually climbs up to the top like the gardeners in LA do.

After the event is over, the pole is chopped into the pieces, which are sent to the place where they make charcoals. Their work progress is interesting to watch. Those chopped pieces are placed with other pieces of the woods. The workers assemble them into a big kiln step by step. Once the work is completed, it is covered with hays and black soils. They put the fire inside the kiln, and the smokes arise from the holes on its surface, which we saw in the opening scene. The circle is completed – it will begin again.

"Le Quattro Volte" means 'four times'. After watching it, I learned that it reflects Pythagoras' belief in "four-fold transmigration" of souls. Even if you do not know well about it(don't worry, neither do I), the movie is an absorbing experience on the cycle of life in nature. I do not believe in reincarnation, but aren't we all made of the atoms, which will, after we are disintegrated, go to the other life forms or the minerals in the world?