Metempsychosis & Le Quattro Volte

LE QUATTRO VOLTE (Blu-ray)
New Wave Films

Release date: October 10th, 2011
Certificate (UK): U
Running time: 88 minutes

Writer/director: Michelangelo Frammartino
Cast: Giuseppe Fuda

Pythagoras of Samos, the 6th century BC Greek philosopher and mathematician, believed that everything in nature has a soul; minerals, plants and animals, as well as humans.

He also believed that one can incarnate from to the other and this is where the idea of Metempsychosis, or Transmigration of the Soul, stems from.

To know ourselves is to know what is around us and within us exists these four elements as well. Therefore, to know ourselves we must first know these four elements. Writer and director Michelangelo Frammartino explains:

Set in the Calabrian hills in southern Italy, Le Quattro Volte introduces us to an elderly goat herder (Giuseppe Fuda) who is nearing the end of his days. Together with his dog, he takes care of his herd and later he visits a cleaning lady who works in the church. In exchange for a bottle of goat’s milk, she gives him a pile of dust swept up from the church floor.

This dust, according to age-old beliefs and customs, has healing powers and so he mixes it with his water to remedy his aches and pains, but on this particular day, he loses the packet while out with the animals. When he gets home he realises its gone but it’s late at night and there’s no one at the church. The goat herder lies in his bed dying the next day.

At the same time a baby goat is born and the cycle of life pushes on. He is slower than the rest of the flock and soon loses his way, falling into a ditch in the middle of the forest. Unable to climb out, he bleats for help, but neither the new shepherd, nor his dog, hear him. He is forced to spend the night alone beside a majestic fir tree, sheltering beneath its leafy branches.

Le Quattro Volte’s depiction of traditions and long-held beliefs in a village that has remained untouched by time is achingly beautiful, poetic and spell-binding. Its all too deceptive simplicity masks layers upon layers of symbolism, ideas and a philosophy that washed over me in such a way that it brought me to the verge of tears. It’s a peaceful, thoughtful and life-affirming kind of film that sadly will not appeal to mass audiences but the few who find it no doubt feel the same way as I did.

Frammartino has spun together a story that defies the norm; freeing us from the dogma which dictates that humans should occupy the leading role in a story or that it should be littered with dialogue and banter to tell us something.

Clearly this is not the case and it’s quite an accomplishment, but not only in filmmaking and storytelling. It does more than just entertain; Le Quattro Volte has that rarest of things among films – truth.