Le Quattro Volte

A very beautiful film with no dialogues at all. Empty spaces and long silence is used for self-reflection, reflecting our own act of perception. A film that needs to be seen with no preconceived notions about it.

You could watch the trailer here: http://bit.ly/17Pk0rw

** Spoiler Alert **

First Time: An old man is shown lost in vague emptiness. He probably lost his way in the society (like a goat!), and resorts to some superstitious beliefs to survive his deteriorating health. No matter how absent minded he might be, he perfectly herds the cattle. It’s like he was doing the same thing for so long that it became a mechanical process. His cautiousness about the cattle (finding the bell in the forest) is very natural. We see him die, maybe, due to already degraded health or the mishap (loosing of the sacred packet) which made him fail to carry-on his belief on which he was living. We are faced with a doubt about which of the two took his life?

Second Time: With one life form loosing existence, a new one takes place in form of a goat. Perhaps some of the human behavior was shown through the growing up of the goat. Accidentally, it is lost from the herd and it seemed so lost to not even know what to do next. This helplessness makes it look to a tree and there is this feeling of ‘faith’ in the tree. Ignorant and purposeless goat randomly kept faith in that tree and takes resort in it. (The film is so religiously surrounded and it is probably an explanation for the birth of religion). An end to its life was again inevitable.

Third Time: The tree was evergreen. Surviving each season and still evergreen. It was a place to rest for lives, a faith in aimlessness until men exploited it (In the direction, these men are just vague shallow people where director doesn’t care for a close up and they are shot like a herd). Perhaps due to its spectacular-ity and ancient-ism (Men always seemed to be attracted towards things that are ancient, enormous and which they cannot understand), men used it for their weird amusements (probably faith).

The nature of human-kind to exploit anything available till it’s exhausted is explored. Possibly the same exploitation happened with the old man and when he was exhausted, people left him to wander.

A vehicle with logs of wood shows us the roads, bridges, mountains in the path to expose how mercilessly men has used nature to meet his ever-growing needs and is giving back smoke (through the vehicle’s exhaust) to nature in return.

Fourth Time: Scene paves way now to where it started. A dome shaped artful creation of men to make coals using all those wood logs. Again, giving back smoke to nature as a token of gratitude. These coals make their way to houses, where the old man used to deliver cattle products, to cook their food and the smoke comes out.

The four times is a film about things that cannot be said about life. It's incomprehensible and amazing with very minute technical errors.