User reviews

Although most of what we know about the Greek philosopher Pythagoras derives from sources written four hundred years after his death, he is regarded to have been a believer in the doctrine known as the transmigration of souls, the idea that the soul of man can reincarnate in different forms: as man, animal, vegetable, or mineral depending on one's karma. Referred to in Indian tradition as samsara, the idea of transmigration has recently been depicted in Apichatpong Weerasethakul's, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, where Boonmee's son is reborn as a monkey ghost and one of Boonmee's past lives is as an erotic talking catfish.

The doctrine that all things are part of the divine whether a tree, a lump of charcoal, an animal, or a human being is also dramatized in Le Quattro Volte, written and directed by Michelangelo Frammartino. Set in a small village in Calabria in Southern Italy where Pythagoras is said to have lived, Le Quattro Volte is a quietly meditative film that is divided into four sections separated by a blank screen. There is no narration or dialogue other than the dialogue of nature: the bleating of goats, the sheep bells, and the rush of wind blowing through the trees. Frammartino offers no clues or connections to the viewer as to what each segment represents. It is a film, he warns, in which "the viewer must do all the work." As the film opens, an old man (Giuseppe Fuda), emerges out of the smoke rising from a charcoal kiln, tending to his goats in a pastoral setting that may not have changed for hundreds of years. The goat herder has a persistent cough that he tends to by exchanging goat's milk for dust on the floor of the local church and mixing it with a glass of water. When he realizes that his medicine has disappeared, he goes back to the church late at night but it is closed. Without his elixir, he dies the following morning in his bed surrounded by a herd of goats that made their way into his bedroom, one standing on the top of his table.

Taking a page from Sergei Dvortsevoy's Tulpan, the scene shifts suddenly from the darkness of the old man's tomb to the birth of a live goat with its fluid being licked by its mother, a sequence that suggests the continuation of life. We follow the young kid as it grows steadily from taking its first steps to playing with other young goats. His development is interrupted, however, by a ten-minute sequence showing revelers taking part in a passion play celebrating Good Friday. Hilariously the old man's dog, after being chased off by villagers after annoying them with constant barking, retaliates by unblocking the wheels of their truck parked on a hillside causing it to roll down the hill, freeing a herd of goats enclosed in a pen.

As the goats are led through the forest, the baby goat becomes separated from the herd and wanders in the heavy brush until he lies down at the foot of a tall pine tree. With that, the film moves into another stage that shows the process of cutting down and stripping the tall tree. To complete the cycle, the tree is then made into a hut where wood and straw are converted into charcoal to provide heat for the winter, suggesting the oft-repeated phrase from The Book of Common Prayer, "ashes to ashes, dust to dust." Lacking in what is generally considered to be drama or character identification,Le Quattro Volte can be slow going and abstract, a film that rarely engages the emotions, yet it has a serene and contemplative beauty that allows its message of the impermanence of life to become manifest. As Eric Benet put it in his well-known song Dust in the Wind, "Don't hang on. Nothing lasts forever, but the earth and sky, it's there always and all your money won't another minute buy. Dust. . . all we are is dust in the wind. Dust in the wind…Time for the healing to begin."

"O Lord, you have seduced me, and I was seduced." This, the central sentiment expressed by the Carthusian monks of the Grande Chartreuse monastery in "The Great Silence" (2005), was also how I felt on leaving "Le Quattro Volte" (2010).

As with "The Great Silence," one of the most striking features of "Le Quattro Volte" (The Four Times) is its lack of dialogue. However, whereas for some individuals the 169 minutes of near silence in "The Great Silence" was overly taxing, in this shorter, more widely focused film - quietly reflecting aspects of life in an isolated village in Calabria – the Milanese director Michelangelo Frammartino has given us a predominantly visual poem of place, of space, of people and of the passing of time.

Although not overly religious, it is a spiritually orientated film in which we are asked to consider Pythagoras' contention that we must each know ourselves four times due to the fact that we "have four lives within us - the mineral, the vegetable, the animal and the human".

Therefore within its 88 minute run the small number of central human characters that are featured within it are soon relegated to positions of equality, or of equal vulnerability, before nature. Thus, for example, the goat-herder's animals soon come to the forefront of the film, as do other elements of the animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms, in order to declare – seemingly – that these other realms also warrant serious and respectful consideration.

An extremely enjoyable and far-from-always-serious film, I found this a beautifully filmed, calming and thought-provoking movie.

I wanted to hate this film for one reason or the other. In the first 15 minutes or so I was angry at myself for watching it, but luckily I kept watching. Le quattro volte is simply about the cycle of life seen in close-mid shots and distant, long static shots of an idyllic provincial hamlet somewhere in the Italian mountains in the Calabria region. It is silent, mysterious and even awkward in moments but eventually the persistent poeticism and patience of the filmmaker taps into you, taps something eternal. It is exquisitely photographed by Andrea Locatelli and directed by Michelangelo Frammartino with such unyielding subtlety that even after the film has ended and the fugue wears off, you may be tempted to shrug it off as a nice little film that you will forget about in a days time, but the persistence of this film stays with you.

My score is more accurately a 7.8/10

My main study is in the nature of insight and immersion, the mechanisms that control it, linked to meditation, so a lot of these slow-paced/ meditational films are recommended to me by friends and users on here. Very few work, and for every Antonioni there are three times as many Tsai Ming-Liangs. This one does.

The difference between one that works and others, which is the difference between meditation and sleep, is how well the filmmaker structures. It's not enough to convey an empty room, there has to be somehow someone there who is just a few words short of self and the room still being empty.

The structure here is that we have three worlds, three burials (four, if we listen to the filmmaker). Dissolution of one means birth in the next, and the whole is being spun because we breathe in the world of the film. In between we get the transient flow of things simply being themselves. We get rituals of living that pass the time, from the absurd Roman parade to sweeping a church floor to herding and playtime among baby goats, rituals about the passing of time like the one with the tallest tree cut down and erected as the center of a ceremony then symbolically cut down again, and our film as a ritual that reflects both kinds of passing.

Its function is like the mandala of Tibetans, a space where you still the mind until you begin to notice more than painted symmetry. From passing time to observation about the passing.

I would have preferred a little less quirkiness from Tati in the individual parts and a little more purity but that is a minor complaint. If you like this, look out for a guy called Ben Rivers.

The end is not an end in the classical sense and only recycled being, another mandala here. But you have to see it. What is the smoke of burned trees blowing out to the forest but transformation, the forest returning to itself? There's a beautiful Zen saying about this.

As charming and visually captivating as this film may be, it lacks content which at times seems to be filled with shots that are too long or that do not provide relevant elements to the film (besides offering the already mentioned captivating visuals) and that after a while become exhausting. The problem with this film is that it's too long for it's content but if it had been done as a short it would have probably lacked atmosphere.

This extensive use of long lasting shots and static moments at some point stop creating reflection moments and instead create reasons for the audience to grow bored which, to some extent, takes the effectiveness off the ending. Slow paced movies have to work in a particular way so that the audience may remain focused on the plot, to do this, things have to happen within the story presented; that rarely happens here.

So as other reviews mentioned, if the viewer has the desire to have a closer look at the rural Italian life, yeah, they'll find a sort of... well, slow view of what that is. If you're looking for an art-house kind of thing, this doesn't really work either. The real problem is that it doesn't either show enough rural life in terms of a documentary, nor is it deep enough to be a successful fiction film. Cute, but really wasn't able to engage the story.

I went to see this movie at Renoir-Curzon in central London last bank Monday.

I was with two friends of mine: another Calabrian and a Sicilian. I invited them telling the movie was shot in Calabria, but I was worried the plot wouldn't interest them.

I was wrong, this movie astonished the three of us completely: I was not only fascinated by the beautiful views of the Calabrian countryside, but the idea of mixing philosophic concepts with very basic, rural and remote communities still sticks in my mind.

"Le quattro volte" means "the four times" and the movie gives an interpretation of Pythagoras (who taught and settled in Calabria in the 6th century BC) concept of four successive lives that each of us holds: mineral, vegetable, animal and human.

In the movie there are all the elements of this concept shown in a very poetic and amusing way: we have an old goatherd as human, a kidskin as animal, a tree as vegetable and coal (carbon) as mineral. All connected in a cycle of life and death to symbolise the re-incarnation.

The sound of nature and rural human activities is the soundtrack of the movie, it makes us understand we, as human beings, are not at the centre of the universe, we should be aware of the elements we are part of and live in harmony with them.

All this makes Le Quattro volte an absolute masterpiece: 10/10

Don't fall for the over-hyped praise for this arthouse film. Yes, it's filmed wonderfully, but so is a nice book of still photos. A movie needs a plot. It needs to be understood. It needs to connect throughout. People have praised this film mostly because they see others praising it...and not for its own merits. It begins with a lonely old man tending his goats. He eats dirt from the local church to help his cough. Interesting, right? Let's see what happens to him. Uh, no. We don't see him again. Instead, the whole movie changes out of the blue. We see a baby goat born, and then he gets lost in the woods. Interesting, right? What will happen to him once he is lost from his mama? We'll never know, because the director now takes us to a lumberjack cutting down a tree. Wait, what? Where is the old man? Where is the goat? We don't know, because the director chooses to show some villagers raising the tree and then burning it into charcoal. Utterly bizarre and no continuity from the two other stories that we wanted to see how they concluded. I won't spoil the ending for you, but nothing much is explained.

I saw this film in Norway where it recently came out in the cinemas.

The title refers to the four seasons and the story follows a cycle of birth, death and rebirth. There is a symmetry in the film, and each part focuses on the fate of one individual (a farmer, a goat and a tree, for instance).

The film makes effective use of the beautiful landscape of Calabria, and the old, ramshackle village. The setting is perhaps in itself the main character of the film. Humans are often viewed from above, and we are in a sense getting the "God" treatment.

There is barely any plot or a story to speak of, yet we go through stages of life that are eternal and inevitable - and we are reminded again and again that all things must pass.

There are life-like documentary aspects to this feature. The film is shot in available light with amateur actors and animals that will endear you. The result is breathtaking and inspiring. The sound scape is also rich: it helps create an emotional journey through every chapter of the film.

I can highly recommend this to anyone interested in unusual films with no dialogue or discernible plot, but anyone also will no doubt be captivated by it's gorgeous setting, it's humble characters or the feeling of watching life pass, unfiltered.

Run, don't walk, from this movie. It is excruciatingly boring and this from a person who likes slow movies. Think minimum of one-minute-long takes focused on the same subject where absolutely nothing happens. The message was supposed to be quite deep, I suppose, but it really wasn't "all that" – instead rather mundane. Numerous flaws were evident – the same goat wasn't even used throughout "the goat's" life (you could see from its markings), and at one point you could see that it was tied up so that it couldn't go far where instead it was supposed to have been stuck in a ditch. The landscape and village shots were supposed to be very beautiful, but actually they were nothing special and the colour washed out, at that. At one of the scenes which was supposed to be beautiful, I actually closed my eyes to rest from the crushing monotony of the film. A few forced laughs came at some of the scenes but it seemed more like people were just grasping at straws at something in the movie. If I hadn't been with friends, I would have walked out. For some reason this won best film at the Reykjavík International Film Festival, but the clapping at the end of the screening to a packed theatre was at most half-hearted – I imagine only the most artsy-fartsy could think this was a good film. Its only redeeming features was that it showed old-fashioned life in Italy and how charcoal is made, which was probably the most interesting thing of the film.

Le Quattro Volte is the essence of fine film making, of film making as art that does not need to rely on technological camouflage to tell an engrossing human story. Who needs violence, car chases, explosions, and overwhelming special effects when there are films like this to be seen? If you have ever spent just a single day allowing yourself to be totally absorbed into a small, isolated town (this one just happens to be in the hills of southern Italy), this film will evoke visceral feelings from deep within you of recollection, pathos, and respect for tradition and simple human dignity. With practically no dialog, it is a visual tone poem that speaks volumes about the nature, pace, toils, loneliness, and devotion to ritual of small, traditional communities everywhere.

Anaxagoras believed in the transmigration of the soul, whilst Pythagoras held that the soul had three sides--the ethereal, the luminous and the terrestrial. in Frammartino's 'le quattro volte' in a way is a misnomer. Although he depicts four phases, his film remains planted firmly on Mother Earth, in animal, vegetable and the mineral. Shot in long view, everything takes place in a village in Calabria, a Calabria unchanged in habit since it seems time immemorial, notwithstanding modern trappings. It seems as though there things are no more than a repetition of learned habits. It would be well for the film goer to see the monotony of life as presented in Carlo Levi's 'Christ stopped at Eboli', also in Calabria. They rhythm of nature continues: the goat herder who dies, the kid dropped by its mother goat, the massive fir tree resplendent in the snow, then cut down for a village festival (as a May pole?), and then cut up and put to flames so that out of its death comes charcoal for heating, for commerce and for other uses. There is a timeless beauty nonetheless that Frammatino's camera capture,as it documents the utter sameness of a slice of peasant life that lingers, in the annual cycle of the seasons, endlessly repeated.

Contemplative? Meditative? Oh do be serious please! You can use those terms about that wonderful film: Spring, Summer Autumn and Winter but not this pretentious little film.

If you are watching it on DVD you should first watch the Director interview so as to avoid thinking it is a series of still life shots. I mean to say Mr. Director, I have never seen a shot of a tree from the ground that seems to last forever. Nor have I seen the sky before in all my life so thank you for giving us a shot that lasted about half an hour. Pretty clouds, now that's what I call imaginative cinema. I am also grateful that you didn't tell us what the old man was putting in the large pan. Nor did you tell us what happened to the kid goat or what the old man was putting into the glass of water. Hmmm...maybe a clever mystery film and I've missed something? As for the ant walking across the old man's face. Well I never! I didn't know that I was supposed to see the face as being representative of the ant's landscape. You had me wondering whether you thought that up after you filmed the shot or did you have a specially trained ant that followed your directions? I am also indebted to you for all the charcoal shots. I think I counted about twenty all being the same. I wished you had done more in order for me to appreciate the abstract quality of burnt wood.

And those snow scenes. They didn't make sense. Nothing happened, they seemed like an after thought. Had you cut them out you could have re-titled the film Tre Volte and saved us a little bit of viewing time. In fact you could have cut everything out apart from the wonderful goats and the manic dog and then you could have called it Una Volte.

Thank you for making a film that has made me think. I am glad that the dog won the Palm Dog award. I hope you gave him some biscuits.

Le Quattro Volte is a beautiful document. It opens a window on a time, place and people that are very different from modern city life. And yet the cycle man-animal-vegetable-mineral is still ours. While the movie depicts life as it is today in the Italian village (someone is taking a photo with a mobile phone) it could have taken place fifty years ago. The film depicts events at a slow pace, giving you time to absorb the events and landscape. Yet the film is engaging from start to finish. Scenes such as the one where the young goats are playing in the shed or when the dog challenges the boy are captivating, even sitting at the first row in a small art-house cinema.

Would that life in life in an isolated village in Calabria, or any other place be as beautiful and silent.

There was not one word of dialog in the film. The only utterances was the dog barking and the sheep bleating.

An old man dies and presumably is reborn as a goat. The goat dies and it subsumed into a tree. The tree becomes charcoal, a mineral and dust.

Dust thou art and to dust thy shall return.

Matter is neither created nor destroyed.

Pick your interpretation.

It was a film to contemplate. It was full of Christian imagery, but it also stimulates mediation.

Not for everybody, but it was a beautiful film.

Intelligent film, but a little bit too long and too slow.

The film has no plot, but only a theme. The theme is that human life consists of four hierarchically ordered layers.

The first and highest is the layer of the ratio. This layer is exclusively human. The next is awareness of the enviromment using the senses (anamalistic). The third layer is growth (biological processes, vegetables) and the lowest level is mineral at which level change is brought about by chemical processes.

In "Le quattro volte" the layers are represented by a sheperd (human), a goat (animal), a tree (vegetable) and charcoal (mineral).

The idea of the four different layers (great chain of being) is very old and originates in Greek philosophy. It was later adopted in Christianity, where an angelic layer and a divine layer were added above the human being.

The layers are being passed through from higher (ratio, human being) to lower (chemical, charcoal). This sounds a little bit pessimistic, just like in a "Turin horse" (2011, Bela Tarr) where life seems to be to extinguishing very slowly. In the end the charcoal is however a source of fuel and warmth for the human being, making "Le quattro volte" cyclical in nature.

at first I thought it was going to be a film depicting philosophical insight into life and death but it didn't really play out like that for me, it seemed more an observation on the subject, and perhaps the inter connected nature of rural life (and death).almost documentary like in it's approach,a study perhaps. it was quite poetic at times, mesmerising was a good word used to describe it. if you've had a stressed out day and you want a film to wind down with, this is the one. the cinematography is beautiful. its a wonderful spiritual study on life and death. something to note is the lack of dialogue. its very sparse in this regards, this is by no means a bad thing,in my opinion it is most certainly a good thing and lends to that mesmerising quality. I thought I should mention this in my review though, as many peoples expectations of films are that they are to include a verbal narrative or some dialogue between cast members.

The makers of this film took a worthy stab at telling a different kind of story which is apart from the mainstream. I believe it is a story about mankind and mother nature and being in harmony with all that is around us, but it is hard to tell. Unfortunately the filmmakers did not make that clear for us. Many viewers will undoubtedly find beauty in this film about goats and trees. I don't know if I found true beauty in it, but I did enjoy many moments. Others felt slow and tedious. It feels very "artistic." However I do believe this film has a purpose. For those who are interested in seeing what foreign cinema has to offer but are turned off by the idea of having to read burdensome subtitles the whole time, this is a film for you. There is no dialogue and nothing to read. So if you like slow films and don't like reading, perhaps you will find true beauty here. Or if you just want to zone out for an hour and a half or like looking at paintings, because this film is a lot like a painting in many ways.

Just saw this beautiful film. In this new age we are bombarded with films containing fast paced cinematography, thrilling scenes and chilling moments to get human attention. After watching this film I thought its so beautiful to just relax and do not have any expectations and look at life in a small village in mountains just the way it is. Film had some incredible cinematography and I loved that it had no dialogue.

I was not aware of Pythagoras's idea of transmigration which was quite unique and beautifully captured in this film. Some of the long shots were breathtaking like the one with the sheep getting out of the barn after the truck pushes back and breaks the gate. The view from above. The section of the film with the baby goats and older goats was amazing. I learned that how difficult it could be to survive as an animal in this world and how a little goat lost the herd and nature is so beautiful but at the same time so cruel. If we think about Transmigration and if the animals have the capability to remember their human form, how that would be? What would they think? The goat or tree which we see might be one of our ancestors. This film is deep and made me think a lot.

The best thing about watching this film was coming to IMDb to read the reviews, and have a good laugh. This is possibly the most tedious, self-indulgent, sententious and risible film I have ever seen. Yes, yes, I get the point: dust to dust, ashes to ashes, charcoal to charcoal.......reincarnation, the rituals of life, etc. All fine and thought provoking concepts. Trying to do it in cinematic terms with three-hour* takes of trees blowing in the wind and endlessly repeating shots of landscape with (gosh!) clouds and sky just doesn't work (*I exaggerate. I meant two-hour). I couldn't believe how some reviewers have fallen for it and praised this film to its arty-farty wide-angle skies. Some of the comments about Pythagoras and the four aspects of life (human, animal, vegetable, mineral) are interesting and insightful and may be true, but the film manages to make them about as captivating as a long shot of watching the paint dry on a right-angle triangle. Beautiful but dull, dull, dull. And by the way, I'm writing this review in southern Italy where I know a little bit about Italian village life - I can tell you, it's a heck of a lot more exciting than this!

When you write a review it's important not to give anything away, thereby spoiling it for those who have yet to see the movie.

In this case, that wont be a problem. So little happens over the eight hours that this film runs, oops I mean 88 minutes, that I couldn't include a spoiler if I tried!

It's really dull, arty yes, but very dull.

If you want to sit for a while and let the sights and sounds wash over you with no effort required, then this film is perfect. If you want entertainment, look elsewhere.

3 out of 10, just for the countryside shots.

Good surprises are always rewarding, even if they take 10 years to cross your path. Acquired months ago, the film "The Four Times" (2010) had been shelved until I decided to sit and watch it, and the experience has been extraordinary.

Set and shot in Calabria, by Calabrian filmmaker Michelangelo Frammatino, the film was inspired by the philosophical ideas of Pythagoras, who created a brotherhood precisely in a city in the region of Calabria, composed of men and women who practiced asceticism, were vegetarians and believed in metempsychosis or the transmigration of some psychic, spiritual and even physical traits from one being to another, regardless of whether it is between humans, animals, vegetables or minerals, unlike the concept of reincarnation.

Of course, illustrating this requires talent and good execution and, fortunately, director Frammatino reveals himself as an artist capable of producing a composition of four stories, with four "protagonists" that, apparently, migrate from one to another, as the passage of seasons. From a story about an old shepherd, followed by others about a little goat, a fir tree and coal, to finally go back to the origin, may sound like poor dramaturgy, but, on the contrary, it is that transparent progression executed with great skill by natural actors and the technical crew that takes the film to the field of great works.

An economic movie as I have rarely seen, but a rich one in aesthetic value, «The Four Times» is a masterpiece of contemporary cinema of observation and reflection, and a great portrait of nature and human condition, that place it among the best film works that I saw in 2019 and in this decade.