Le Quattro Volte

Director Michelangelo Frammartino
Country Italy-Germany-Switzerland

Calabria has remained essentially unchanged for centuries, perhaps millennia. In Le Quattro Volte an old goatherd follows his flock as they rummage the same route of grass and rocks they have known all their lives. Each day he gives a pint of milk to the caretaker of the local church in exchange for her sacred floorsweepings, which he dissolves in water and drinks every night as a tonic. One day he loses his dose and, unable to get more, dies.

Here the story, rather than ending, simply takes up with a new hero, a baby goat, born the day the old man expires. The kid, stumbling about confused and eventually lost by a massive tree, passes on its story to that tree and its role in the life of the village and the chief local industry of making charcoal.

Le Quattro Volte moves as slowly as clouds in Calabria. Without the focus of a camera the activities of a goat, or the process of wood smouldering to brittle carbon would seem like non-events. But by letting these non-events unfold in real time Michelangelo Frammartino subtly guides the narrative with simple camera work and editing, letting the viewer invest passing events with character, meaning, and plot. There is no dialogue, except for goats bleating “Hey! Over here! What about me! I’m hungry!” and their bells clanging a rambling soundtrack. It almost seems like a documentary without the intrusion of a narrator.

Definitely not a film for everyone, but if you have the patience you can find yourself sinking into the timeless patterns of an ancient land and the people and animals who exist briefly upon it.