It takes a filmmaker of fearless confidence to know he has something with this group of people and makes an epic of of the seemingly ordinary. The power of Ermano Olmi's film is that the "ordinary" is no less absorbing, rather it just means the farm people aren't involved in some "plot" or genre schematic, and if crimes happen among the citizens it's petty one's or fights between the family members (one ugly one where father and son have to pulled apart as one example).
While I dont know if this will grab everyone in the same way, and for me it took a couple of minutes, what is so profound about the film is that you feel as though you're seeing Olmi, through the dignity given to everyone here, and the struggles and joys and the time as a community in church and with those cows and Pigs, transport you to that time and place.
If it reminded me of anything it was Visconti's La Terra Trema in that it's not a Neo-Realist urban story set in a city but rather in a more secluded, lower working class/rural environment, the filmmaker takes a lot of time (less like a slice of life than an entire pie of a life), !nd that it's less about the what of the story than how people act and talk, work and react, and love and fight (and listen); the adults and children of this family have to learn and lose and face heart-break (both with things like a sick cow or a misbehaved child).
The difference here is, with Olmi, he is recreating a time period of turn of the 19th to 20th century, yet nothing looks like it was built up exactly, even as logically I know there were production design choices and, if not built sets, artistic decisions in how light could come in naturally for the cinematographer and so on. And while it has the aesthetic naturalism of the masters of neo-realism I wouldn't say it has quite the same approach to sentimentality (and for Olmi things have sprawled so much here that the episodes are all of a piece). The Lombard people are "acting" in the purest sense, as they're asked to shape little stories and episodes and react in the "small" moments that in reality make up the meat and sinew of our everyday lives.
In other words, Tree of Wooden Clogs packs incident upon incident, and there are memorable parts throughout, but I'm less intrigued and bowled over by any single one event (though that one pig slaughter is a *moment* for sure) than the entire scope of the production. It's not a documentary, but Olmi and his collaborators presents it like one, while at the same bringing breathtaking shot after shot of the countryside, often in this gray and foggy tone. It's unique in 70s cinema and for Italian cinema as a whole.
While I dont know if this will grab everyone in the same way, and for me it took a couple of minutes, what is so profound about the film is that you feel as though you're seeing Olmi, through the dignity given to everyone here, and the struggles and joys and the time as a community in church and with those cows and Pigs, transport you to that time and place.
If it reminded me of anything it was Visconti's La Terra Trema in that it's not a Neo-Realist urban story set in a city but rather in a more secluded, lower working class/rural environment, the filmmaker takes a lot of time (less like a slice of life than an entire pie of a life), !nd that it's less about the what of the story than how people act and talk, work and react, and love and fight (and listen); the adults and children of this family have to learn and lose and face heart-break (both with things like a sick cow or a misbehaved child).
The difference here is, with Olmi, he is recreating a time period of turn of the 19th to 20th century, yet nothing looks like it was built up exactly, even as logically I know there were production design choices and, if not built sets, artistic decisions in how light could come in naturally for the cinematographer and so on. And while it has the aesthetic naturalism of the masters of neo-realism I wouldn't say it has quite the same approach to sentimentality (and for Olmi things have sprawled so much here that the episodes are all of a piece). The Lombard people are "acting" in the purest sense, as they're asked to shape little stories and episodes and react in the "small" moments that in reality make up the meat and sinew of our everyday lives.
In other words, Tree of Wooden Clogs packs incident upon incident, and there are memorable parts throughout, but I'm less intrigued and bowled over by any single one event (though that one pig slaughter is a *moment* for sure) than the entire scope of the production. It's not a documentary, but Olmi and his collaborators presents it like one, while at the same bringing breathtaking shot after shot of the countryside, often in this gray and foggy tone. It's unique in 70s cinema and for Italian cinema as a whole.
Tell Your Friends