The Four Times (Le Quattro Volte) (2011)
Average Rating: 8/10
Reviews Counted: 52
Fresh: 48 | Rotten: 4
Birth, death, and transformation are examined in Le Quattro Volte, a profound and often funny mediation on the cycles of life on earth.
Average Rating: 8.6/10
Critic Reviews: 14
Fresh: 13 | Rotten: 1
Birth, death, and transformation are examined in Le Quattro Volte, a profound and often funny mediation on the cycles of life on earth.
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Average Rating: 3.6/5
User Ratings: 1,800
Movie Info
An idyllic village in Italy's mountainous region of Calabria is the setting for LE QUATTRO VOLTE, an exquisitely filmed take on the cycles of life. Structured in four parts, per its title ("four times"), it opens with a shepherd tending his herd of goats, then shifts focus to one goat in particular, the tree under which he seeks shelter, and the industrialized fate of that plant. A.O. Scott of The New York Times writes: "(Its) view of nature is among the most profound, expansive and unsettling I
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Cast
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Giuseppe Fuda
The Shepherd -
Bruno Timpano
A Coal Maker -
Nazareno Timpano
A Coal Maker
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All Critics (54) | Top Critics (15) | Fresh (48) | Rotten (4) | DVD (3)
The God's-eye view becomes mesmerizing when we stop insisting that the film flatter us and just enjoy a quiet ride on the cycle.
Top CriticI drifted pleasantly in its depths.
Le Quattro Volte may sound like art-house tedium, but in fact it's a movie of grave beauty, serene pace and surprising humor.
Give Le Quattro Volte the patience it deserves, and you will be captivated by its stately rhythms, transfixed by its strange imagery, and moved by its sudden dramas. Don't, and you'll be bored to tears.
If Dante hadn't already made classic use of the title, Michelangelo Frammartino's Le Quattro Volte could instead have been called The Divine Comedy.
Explaining it makes it sound aridly abstract, but watching it is pure delight...
It's both an embrace of the comfort of ritual and certainly and acknowledgement of the magic of the unexpected and the accidental bringing change to routine.
Whose images of everyday life in the sticks makes for hypnotic viewing.
A quiet, meditative, and spiritual Italian film about the transmigration of the soul.
The film's apparent simplicity is, in large measure, its charm and its universal appeal.
Le Quattro Volte is cinematic slow food. It takes its time, is meticulous in its presentation, carefully considers the experience it provides, and then serves up a satisfying and nourishing feast.
Yes, at times, this quiet, meditative film is lovely. At other times, it's just plain tiresome. There's an actual shot of dust particles.
An intriguing, somewhat maddening intellectual puzzle film and then a hypnotic illustration of an ambiguous, unsettling thesis.
Frammartino's seductive little film is poised halfway between doctored doc and artfully spare narrative.
It's an odd little film, to be sure, but it does a nice job of exploring the ways in which all life is eventually connected.
If you succumb to these charms, I guarantee walking out of the theatre into the noisy city will be a jarring sensory overload experience.
It's a lovely piece of cinema with a striking visual sensibility, a sly sense of humour and a terrific cast of human and animal actors.
Frammartino's idyll of mystic metempsychosis batters down the boundary fence between tradition and modernity, pagan and Christian, documentary and fiction.
If you can separate yourself from the buzz of higher-pitch cinema, the film's beauty, wit and charm come as a breath of fresh air.
It is an essay, a cinematic poem, a spiritual exploration of time and space, and it's designed to make us think and feel about the world around us and our place in it.
Beautifully shot and featuring some highly impressive animal wrangling, Le Quattro Volte is a bizarre arthouse film that's thought-provoking, surprisingly moving and occasionally laugh-out-loud funny.
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Movie: ID: 771040689 Title: The Four Times (Le Quattro Volte) Release Date: 2011-03-30 00:00:00.0 MPAA: 6 Status: 1
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Foreign Titles
- Vier Leben (DE)
- The Four Times (Le quattro volte) (UK)
For all intents and purposes, there is no dialogue throughout the entire film, forgiving a few inaudible murmurs between characters. This lack of dialogue is in no way missed, due to Michelangelo Frammartino's direction and the stars of the film, the animals, and nature itself.
I'm not quite sure how much of it was staged, and how it was made to happen, but the goats and dog of this film are arguably far funnier than the highest paid comedians of Hollywood. The obvious sequence involving the shepherd's dog, a rock, a truck and a procession. Couple that with the sorrow felt when the goat we follow from birth becomes separated from its pack, bleating away, trying to find its way back home, eventually settling into a hillside at night, starkly contrasted by the thick snow covering all, spelling inevitable doom; amazingly invokved emotions.
Having seen 'The Tree of Life' so recently, there were similarities thematically with 'Le Quattro Volte', but where Malick's scope was so, so grand, and framed around Christianity, I loved the smaller, focused scope of 'Le Quattro Volte'. Inspired by philosopher Pythagoras' belief in four-fold transmigration - from human to animal to vegetable to mineral, Frammartino steers the ship in such a way that the interconnectedness of it all is seamless and poetic, in tune with the four seasons, and the lives of everyone in the town.
In his review, A.O. Scott said...
"You have never seen anything like this movie, even though what it shows you has been there all along"
I haven't seen many goats myself, but I don't think I can put it any better.
[text from http://blog.c0up.com/le-quattro-volte-spoilers-duh]