Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Frammartino has created a small miracle in "Le Quattro Volte," which translates to "the four times," which translates again to "the four seasons." It's a film without a word of dialogue, so its Italian heritage will pose no language problems. It's a film that spends a year with a goatherd from Calabria, in southern Italy, and there's almost no action besides that in a delightful and funny scene involving a truck and a herd of goats.
Frammartino, working with talented cinematographer Andrea Locatelli, offers up a simple tale (some may find it too simple) of an elderly man and his simple life. The change of seasons and the luxuriant countryside are a symbol of change, the death of a goat is part of the eternal balance of hope and pain, the transmutation of a giant tree into a hill of charcoal is a necessary agent of survival.
The writer-director takes no political or social stance. Everything is simple. Things are what they are. I found "Le Quattro Volte" an interesting, often-fascinating experience and admire the director's solid, quiet story.
Le Quattro Volte opens today at the Tivoli
—Joe