IL POSTINO (The Postman, 1994) ***1/2 Philippe Noiret, pretending to be Pablo Neruda, says that over-analyzing poetry imposes artificial limitations and reduces the transcendent to the banal, something like that. He's right, which is probably why it's a requirement of post-graduate students. You really want to be integrated in this culture? Write me three canned bean slogans based on great writers, then fifty pages each explaining why they (the slogans) are significant. So, it's not only vulgar to go into too much detail, but metaphysically dangerous. I will say that Massimo Troisi can make five detailed and descriptive speeches with his face over a period of thirty seconds; you can see the waves of emotion coming on like aurora borealis. I will also say that everything looks absolutely perfect: Maria Grazia Cucinotta, the waters of the Aeolian Islands, the fishing boat, the bicycle, Linda Moretti, Anna Bonaiuto. Michael Radford eases you into a nice simple romance, with the post-war Western intellectual purge as a backdrop, doesn't he? He cooks it up in that romantic Italian style that comes so naturally to some (the Chilean poet here), and presumably (so we don't have to try) only escapes others. An awkward to laugh at, no? Heroes and lovers are born. But to cook up such a dish might take some time, rest back, ok. Just as soon as it's achieved gentle perfection, Radford throws in the worst clunker of a plot twist that you've ever seen. Except that he was only turning up the temperature, you see. The sudden burst of heat, she makes you jump. And when something great makes you jump, you can only land somewhere better. The personal/political/spiritual metaphor of Troisi remembering where the Nerudas danced is something too impossibly beautiful, and terrible, to remember or receive as a visual. The film stops, all films do. Sooner or later you stand up, maybe now you have something you can't leave on the format.
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