Spiritual Films

Il Postino (The Postman), Michael Radford, 1994, Italy  Trailer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXCC7SdJW1o <> T his 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 happen to 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. Mario learns that much poetry depends on metaphors, a species of rhetoric he does not understand. He wants to know what it means. Pablo says, “When you explain poetry, it becomes banal. Better than any explanation is the experience of feelings that poetry can reveal to a reader open enough to understand it.” Mario eats this up. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiGGagSRO88 Mario reads the book Pablo gave him and is transfixed. Later he tells Pablo, “I was like a boat tossing around on your words.” Pablo says, “You’ve invented a metaphor.” Mario replies, “The whole world is a metaphor.” One day Mario delivers the big news from Stockholm: Neruda is being considered for a Nobel prize. Then Mario falls for a lovely woman, Beatrice (Maria Grazia Cucinotta), who works at a restaurant in town. He tells Pablo about it. Pablo responds to the name because a real-life figure named Beatrice shows up in several poems by Dante Alighieri, Italy’s famous Renaissance poet. Pablo urges Mario to write a poem for Beatrice. So Mario starts in on a poem. He has no trouble pulling metaphors from his heart: “Your laugh is a sudden silvery wave,” he writes. “Your smile spreads like a butterfly.” Actually, at this stage, Beatrice doesn’t laugh much or smile much. She is pretty aloof. But when she gets a load of Mario’s lines of poetry, she goes for it and him.