LE QUATTRO VOLTE (THE FOUR TIMES)
When a filmmaker points a camera at something, it’s because it’s important. You see a character’s decision to go somewhere, and the arrival/result. But you don’t see the whole getting into the car and driving there part, unless the driving is the important part. There are some films, documentaries mostly, that abuse this. Films like the ruthlessly boring Mexican documentary The Night Watchman, in which the filmmaker is both lazy and pretentious enough to fill 90 minutes of stuff they just filmed, without any real point of view or purpose. Or rather, they seem to think the purpose is the juxtaposition of their images against one another. “Ooo, look, a scene of a guy watching TV followed by rooftops covered in antennas.” That’s not filmmaking, that’s editing.
At the start, this film, from director Michaelangelo Frammartino, seems to be that type of film. Almost completely wordless, just the actions of a goat farmer in a tiny Italian village. But slowly you start to realize it’s not a documentary at all. Frammartino’s sparse, simple shots aren’t just a looking but a deliberate choreography. Long takes, repetition, steady pans and moves not for their own sake but for a greater goal. He captures the basic beauty of living and dying (the farmer, a goat, a tree), and the cycle of it all. It’s a tale that’s been told before, but never so simply and poignantly. And it’s because the simplicity is consciously deliberate and controlled (the baby goat seems to hit all the perfect marks) that the importance of the images isn’t just implied. It’s there from the first shot frame. It’s not for everybody, there’s nary a word in the whole film. But there’s a quiet, small beauty to it.
