As there is just one review here, and extremely negative, it is mandatory to write mine.
Ermanno Olmi is, and always has been, the poet of silence. In fact, his first movie (Il tempo si è fermato, film 1958) was about a mountain dam keeper, living in the silence of mountains that, by the way, I happen to know very well.
This Torneranno i Prati (meaning, The Meadows Will Return) is not a war movie: it is a movie about war. If you expect to see brave soldiers assaulting the enemy with the sun in front and screaming "Geronimo", don't go to see this one. There are killed people, there is also some cannon bombing, but, for instance, the enemies are never seen. He is "so close that you can hear them breathing", but they are never shown.
The plot is simple: it is the story of one single night of World War I, during a snow covered winter, on a mountain site where the real war was. Everything happening in the movie had happened in real: it is not said if it happened all during the same night, and in the same place, but every single fact is real.
The movie is made of a lot of silence, filled by the inner thoughts, expectations, fears, scare, hope and desperation of these people, that are men before being soldiers. This is about war, it stupidity, it tells how horrible and stupid war is. Ermanno Olmi shows an incredibly deep compassion for all these soldiers, and actually, in the theater, more than one handkerchief appeared toward the end of the movie (including mine).
The music is sparse and minimal, but really fitting. The mountain landscapes, under a full moon, are just gorgeous: only a live experience of that can be better.
The movie was shown the first time on November 4th, anniversary of the end of World War I in Italy, in front of the President of the Italian Republic, and, simultaneously, in other 100 countries, including all that participated to that war.
I am looking forward for the DVD, this is a movie to see and see again.
