Spiritual Films
The Secular Approach
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~Il Postino (The Postman), Michael Radford, 1994, Italy Trailer: http://matttrailer.com/il_postino_1995 This movie is about the power of poetry. It’s a bit of a stretch but not out of reach for people who believe art can change lives. It was written by Anna Pavignano and directed by Michael Radford. The main character is Mario Ruoppolo, played by Massimo Troisi, a man past 30. He hasn’t done anything with his life. Little wonder—he came of age on an out-of-the-way Italian island which contemporary society has seemed to pass by. There is not much to do in the island’s village, nothing to aspire to, except to follow his father’s trade as a fisherman, which does not thrill him. Then something happens which results in a total change for Mario: The world-renown poet Pablo Neruda has had to flee his native Chile because of his revolutionary politics. He happens to choose Mario’s island to hide out for a while. We learn this in a TV new flash which Mario and his father see. The news story also mentions that women go crazy for Pablo poetry’s. Mario would like to have a woman in his life. Might he snag her with poetry? What is poetry anyway? the naïve Mario asks. Pablo, played by Phillippe Noriet, is probably in his mid fifties. He settles into a house by the sea with his wife Matilde (Anna Bonaiuto). Not long after this, Mario gets a job delivering mail to one person, Neruda, who because of his fame gets lots of mail. Soon Pablo and Mario start talking poetry. Mario had no idea poetry might work spells on women. Pablo gives Mario one of his books and signs it.
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About the Book
For decades, centuries even, when people thought of spirituality, they thought only of religion. I aim to stretch the tent of spirituality in this e-book to include secular experience. My particular approach to secular spirituality is through the medium of film. Characters in the 43 films I discuss come to spirituality without religion. In some of these films, religion nibbles at the edges of events, as when, in the Brazilian film Central Station, Dora, the cynical letter writer leaves hard-bitten Rio with a boy she hopes to return to his father and finds herself surrounded by evangelicals, shrines, and churches. She does not have any kind of religious conversion, but there is no denying that the piety of the countryside softened her and escorted her into spirituality. Now and then I quote assorted Buddhists, Muslims, Christians and Jews, but usually only when their remarks throw light on secular matters. I have avoided relying on muddled mystics who write about the Great Turning Cosmic Oneness of Everything. I don’t know what they are talking about.
About the Author
I have • taught film “appreciation” and filmmaking for 30 years in a California community college. I have reached students of all ages and walks of life—because community colleges have wider doors than any other level of higher education. They just do not exclude. I even had a blind student who did very well in the film study class with the help of her sighted daughter. Plus I had a nearly-blind student in the filmmaking class who did a mostly black film with sound that exhibited what it was like to be blind. • Published four books about films. Here is a link to my last two conventionally-published books with Allworth Press. http://www.allworth.com/author/?fa=ShowAuthor&Person_ID=145 • won awards in the U.S. and Europe for short dramatic films I have made. • Served as a board member for eight years for a nonprofit which brings foreign and American independent films to my town, Fresno. Go to my monthly column at • http://www.fresnofilmworks.org/articles All the same, no writer is perfect. The difference here is that you are my copy editor, not an editor sitting in a NYC publishing house. if you find typos, factual mistakes, goofy ideas, bad grammar or inelegant expressions, please call them to my attention by emailing me at jkp21@live.com. I hope readers contact me about improvements I might make to this book. I call these “updates.” They might include new chapters or new takes on spirituality. To check on updates, click “updates” above. You will get a list of updates plus a free copy of the book for a period of one year after purchase.