cafe Pellicola - window to fine italian cinema

In tempi come questi, la fuga è l’unico mezzo che rimane
per mantenersi vìvi e continuare a sognare.

In times like these, escape is the only mean available
for keeping alive and continue dreaming.

- Henry Laborit

This film opens up with this quote to set the stage for a simple truth; sometimes we need to go out of our comfort zones, venture into new environments, take a few steps back – to allow us to evaluate from afar our goals and dreams.

Director Gabriele Salvatores brings together a group of soldiers during world war II that as part of their mission OC (Observation & Communication) found themselves deserted on a Greek island. This “bubble existence” on this Homeric island, sheltering the soldiers from the havocs of war brings the troupe to evaluate their personal priorities and their interests in life. For example, lieutenant Montini is connected back to his painting as he remodeled the local church, piccolo Farina finally finds love with Vassilissa, the local prostitute turned Taverna owner.

The film has three distinct parts: the troupe arrival on the island, life on the island, and the reunion on the island. You may consider this as new experience creation, living the experience and finally fast-forwarding into the future by revisiting the experience many years later. The first part deals with the transition of the troupe from the external world of war and their clear duties in it into second part - the idyllic life on the island where out of being disconnected, the soldiers are left to explore their personal truths. Finally, the last part offers another perspective from the advantage of time passed, about what this experience on the island really meant.

All soldiers provide a brilliant performance reflecting diverse backgrounds of different parts of Italy. This mixed bag of characters offers plenty moments of humor and memorable dialogs that will keep you smiling days after watching.

And lastly the film is supported by the enchanting soundtrack by Giancarlo Bigazzi that supports the slow, carefree Mediterranean life on the Island of Oblivion as the soldiers call it. In this sense, the film is both about the essence of escape and at the same time provides escape to viewers following the narrative within the confines of entertainment as an outlet from the mundane. If you’re still unconvinced, well the film won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1991.

The final scene shows sergente Lorusso sitting accompanied by his now older comrades, turning his head back into an unknown point. I’d say this simple head movement is like looking back into the past, saying we shouldn’t wait a lifetime to do the things we really care about.

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Writing about this film, I decided not to talk about the plot, actors, angles, the director personal story-drivers and focus on just one aspect.

The soundtrack.

More often than not films’ soundtracks receive minor exposure, like the drummer who is sitting in the back where the lead-singer - in our context actors and director - receive all the attention. True, masterpieces from masters like Ennio Morricone usually can’t be ignored, but overall the trend is real.

Think about it, if you remove the soundtrack from a film, all of a sudden the film becomes a recorded outdoor theater performance. Nothing wrong with that, but it will miss an important channel of communication. As you know the director can deliver her message by non-verbal body language, dialogs, visual angles, smart editing, and finally by music to set a specific tone.

Naturally, a lot of how we associate music to positive or negative plot developments is a result of ongoing learning where composers fulfill our expectations using a consistent vocabulary. In this sense, a tense tempo would support a tense scene and not a light slapstick. And there are always deviations from such mainstream approach if we take for example Pasolini’s 1961 Accatone, where seemingly out of place classical music by Bach provides an epic undertone to the violent life of a pimp in Rome’s slums.

In this film, sentiments of utter loneliness and melancholy are sensibly delivered through original music by composer Ludovico Einaudi. The haunting score uses minimalist piano pieces layered over occasional mounting violin crescendos - opens up a rich world of expression and depth. No wonder it won best sound track at the 2002 Italian music awards.

Einaudi’s signature style, as manifested in several other films, offers “an ambient, meditative and often introspective, drawing on minimalism, world music, and contemporary pop” (source: Wikipedia). In this sense, I believe Einaudi’s score is a natural and updated progression to another legendary composer - Giovanni Fusco whose minimalist piano treatments in Antonioni’s 1957 The Cry (Il Grido) paints a similar brooding ambiance.

Einaudi-Piccioni successful collaboration has already started in 2000 with Out of This World (Fuori dal mondo). Some of his prominent albums include Divenire (2007; piano, orchestra) and Una Mattina (2004; piano).

What a pleasant discovery!

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Through the story of Emilio, a young carabiniere sent to a Sardinian village for its military training, the director Pietro Sanna gives us a picture of this culture that seems unchanged over the centuries.

Emilio comes from Emilia Romagna (region in the North of Italy, on the Riviera of Adriatic sea), and the only idea that he has of Sardinia is the hot tourist season during the summertime. However, once in Barbagia, the internal region of Sardinia probably the most remote, Emilio will face a totally different reality: bandits, bloodthirsty revenges, fear, psychological pressure, silence, resignation, mistrust.

This movie is about recalling the attention into a reality that is forgotten or even unknown to the rest of Italy. The Barbagia is renowned to be house to bandits, in the real meaning, since always. At the beginning of 1900 the Italian government sent forces to defeat the banditry, with some success, however without rooting out its culture. Because the banditry in Barbagia, in Sardinia, it’s a culture which derives from its anthropological history. Even if nowadays they are not that popular anymore and they are more threatened, some still exist and operate, because it is in their inner soul, in their ancestral instinct, is like a last attempt to preserve the species.

Furthermore, lifestyle changed very little, especially for those who work in the ship farming, where rules and laws keep ancient codes.

It is the nature, which remains hidden into a wild heart and in the harsh attitude that D.H. Laurence in its Sea and Sardinia book despite their black skirt and their white shirts with puffed sleeves sees the Sardinian man “so beautiful and stupendously masculine!”

“He walks with his hands behind the back, slow, straight, and detached. Wonderful untamable haughtiness… How beautiful the virility is when it finds its own expression!…”

Well, I just wanted to provide a small cultural background to suggest a deeper reading of such a society. However, a crime is a crime. Likely are very rare today.

For your information the director is a carabiniere in real life and is sardo as well. He was nominated for Donatello award 2004 as best new director.

Check my review of Ballo a tre passi, and watch the video to see the typical Sardinian costume, nowadays more rarely used.

You better leave now if you want to catch this train.

If we do a good job for this worldwide company, we’ll be on the gravy train for more projects.

Sorry, for this class the train has already left the station - registration is over.

Thanks, but you’ve just interrupted my train of thoughts.

Trains offer a rich canvas for conveying many human contexts, challenges, disappointments and hopes. So it’s only natural that cinema would utilize this eclectic locomotive in various ways. And indeed, trains and train stations play a highly emotional role in Italian cinema and beyond. The dramatic sense of departure between loved ones towards the unknown future (I Vitelloni, Federico Fellini - 1953), the arrival to a new place and the constant search for the ever-waiting relative (Rocco and his Brothers – Luchino Visconti - 1960) – and many more.

Whereas in most films the train environment appears only in a few scenes to underscore a particular emotional development, then in this film the train is brought front and center and functions as the constant backdrop for the plot throughout the whole film.

Moreover, this film provide a cross-cultural triptych of three prominent directors; Ermanno Olmi (Italy), Abbas Kiarostami (Iran), and Ken Loach (Britain). Each brings his own artistic sensibilities to weave a story with characters riding the train from central Europe to Rome. The beauty of the film is how these characters transition from one story driven by one director to another. For that matter, it’s definitely worth viewing the Behind the Scenes bonus content to appreciate the careful planning that was involved in weaving these three independent plots into one cohesive artwork.

Often trains’ linear nature represent a metaphor for life’s winding rail where each station is another milestone en route to a final destination, that once accomplished nirvana supposedly descends. The same logic is also apparent in this film where Olmi, leveraging his signature style of using present to past flashbacks (see The Enagaged - I Fidanzati – 1963), Kiarostami by creating a somber brooding mood about past events and Loach by planting series of human miscommunications that unravel upon arrival to Rome.

No doubt, trains are vibrant microcosms where ephemeral human stories are produced every day. Think about it the next time you ride the train…

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