EssenceStory Well Deserved Praise

Teddie Blake The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Bessie Smyth Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Kirandeep Yoder The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

classicsoncall The subtext of Pablo Neruda's (Philippe Noiret) Communism was brought up a distractingly excessive number of times in the movie, and wasn't even necessary to tell the story, except that it was the reason for Neruda's exile. His romantic views of Communism obviously looked askance at the dehumanizing effect the ideology has which promotes subservience to a governmental authority. There's no poetry in that to my mind, but somehow he got many believers to hear his message. Other than that, this is a gentle story that reveals a developing relationship between Neruda and his dedicated postman Mario Ruoppolo (Massimo Troisi) on an Italian island. I liked the way their friendship evolved over the course of the story, and how Mario came to be a lover of poetry. So much so that he asks for Neruda's help in writing a poem that would win him the heart of a pretty waitress in town. Though it didn't appear that the lovely Beatrice (Maria Grazia Cucinotta) had any other romantic prospects available, I personally didn't quite understand the connection she felt for Mario. Obviously uneducated with a limited grasp of reading and writing, Mario didn't have much to offer Beatrice in the way of comfort and security. However once he proclaimed that her smile spread like a butterfly, she was a goner. I hate to be cynical, but I think it would have taken more than that to close the deal with someone of Beatrice's bearing and Mario's lack of. There's a disturbing sense of closure to the story when it's revealed that Mario died shortly before the birth of his son, with Neruda gone and Beatrice raising their young boy alone. Mario was never able to reconcile with the loss of his friend, who returned to his home country of Chile when an arrest warrant against him was revoked. It's strongly suggested that Mario died at the hands of authorities while protesting his pro-Communist leanings at a demonstration that got out of hand. For such a tragic ending, no metaphors are sufficient.

gradyharp Having just visited the opera version of this film IL POSTINO by Daniel Catan courtesy of PBS Great Performances it is rewarding to return to the original source to honor the nidus for the inspiration for the opera. Directed by Michael Radford the film relates the heartwarming story of Mario (Massimo Troisi), a gentle and simple postman who falls for the beautiful café waitress Beatrice (Maria Grazia Cucinotta) from his village, but is too shy to speak to her. He meets the famous Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (Phillipe Noiret), and, as their friendship develops, the postman's own inner poet awakens. Soon he is able to win the love of Beatrice and even stand up for and express his own beliefs.This is a simple story graced by sensitive performances: of not the actor Massimo Trosi died from heart failure on the last day of production of the film. It is possibly this knowledge of the loss of one of Italy's best comedic actors along with the clarity and transparency of the film's gentle message about love and art that has made it a cult film. At any rate this is a film that belongs in every movie lover's library. Grady Harp

johnnyboyz Michael Radford's tender and rather sweet film, The Postman, is a really quite blinding tale of a man, without either much of a life or very many happenings in and around his existence, going out of his way so as to spawn some. The film is a ground zero character study working its way up, centring on one man and coming to gloriously flesh out his relationships with two people in the form of a mentor and a love interest using the item of poetry, and poets in particular, as a focal point or anchor around which to revolve the ever shifting lives of these half a dozen-or so people. The central character is a certain young man named Mario Ruoppolo, played by Italian actor Massimo Troisi whom died shortly after the film was completed and is one of only seven people to have won a Posthumous Academy Award for acting, which he won for his portrayal of a character named Mario. His life in the early part of the 20th Century on an island off the coast of Italy lies seemingly dormant; a living with his father, whom spends his days at sea fishing for a living, whilst inhabiting a scruffy and run down house on the cliff-side which cannot even produce water from a tap when desired, the situation; with a postcard from some brothers whom have arrived in America offering a brief insight into a supposedly better life.Determined to get on track, the softly spoken; delicate and slow moving Mario shifts off to a local post office so as to apply for the advertised job of delivering letters and mail, locally. On another tangent, that later will become intrinsically linked to that of Mario, a controversial poet from South American nation Chile of true to life existence named Pablo Neruda (Noiret) arrives in Italy having been exiled. His demeanour arrives by way of a newsreel sequence at a picture house, footage which the locals and us watch and listen to simultaneously establishing a set-persona of the man and his controversial, Communist infused existence of writing poetry crash-landing on this small Italian island, much to some of the locals' anger but to the glee of others. The early perceptions of the man are meant to be relatively concrete; he inhabits a beautifully placed but isolated red-washed villa on a separate cliff edge, before plodding Mario comes to form a bond with the poet upon delivering his many letters and from whence the film garners its catalyst so as to play out.The film comes to form a learning process for that of Mario, a deconstruction of an item or art-form that he'd almost certainly heard of in the past but very rarely thought about above a certain level. The same can be said for that of Chilian poet Neruda in regards to the fondness and acceptance the town come to have of him after he and his wife and their bond with a number of people come to forge, a relationship much richer than what he has experienced back home or, you feel, in most other places. Romance appears to want to bloom between Mario and local girl Beatrice (Cucinotta), the daughter of a traditional, hard-up Catholic woman whom owns a tavern within the vicinity; the spying of her playing a game of rather erotically charged flick-rod football in said tavern complete with thrusting of the mannequin players and hammering home of the goals more than enough to have Mario smitten from then on in.But the film is ultimately about the relationship or bond between two men going on around their separate relationships with Beatrice and Pablo's own female partner whom later becomes his wife. It would be untrue to say that the film at all feels less of an accomplishment when certain events transpire and the once central unification of Mario and Pablo is broken up; rather, the ties they have to one another during the film's early scenes are just more interesting, as is the chilling finale involving the two, than any sub-plot to do with either men and what happens between them and their women. Mario's attempts to court a young local girl and the noticeable placing of Pablo's own female partner predominantly off screen and away from the action for most of the time might render the relationship between Mario and Pablo one of a homo-erotic nature. Much later on, a Paris based interview with the poet some years later has Mario read on with keen interest as to whether he or anyone from the town are mentioned; the camera darting around from face to face of those reading with Mario in a kind of panic or nervous excitement or lusting requirement for purifying fulfilment in the form of notifying them, predominantly the notifying of Mario.The convenience in having come to have known a master of poetry of a romantic sort, somebody that feeds off of a belief that all women love romantic poetry and that it is the key to pertaining to a relationship, works very much in Mario's favour. His gradual learning of how to construct it, the encountering of terms and words such as what a metaphor is gradually come to form the nucleus of the first half of the film; a fitting sequence on a nearby beach sees Pablo gradually reveal himself as he readies to swim in a physical sense as Mario comes to reveal a spoken metaphor for the very first time as, on another occasion, he gradually forms an opinion of a short poem Pablo comes up with on the spot. The film's attention to finer things such as these, an including of sequences in which characters must first come to master the basics of an art or activity so as to garner entry onto another plateau so as to put what has been learnt into action, feels wonderfully prominent, resulting in Radford's film being thoroughly worthwhile.

Eumenides_0 What can be said of Michael Radford's Il Postino? This is what all cinema should be: a beautiful story with heartfelt performances by amazing actors. Drawing inspiration from Antonio Skármeta's novel, Radford crafts a love story about an average postman who admires Pablo Neruda's poetry and seeks his help to win the heart of the woman he loves. It's a fantastic premise and wonderfully accomplished by Massimo Troisi and Phillipe Noiret.Noiret gives an unforgettable performance as a Neruda, made more startling by their likeness, but the meek and mild-mannered Troisi is the real heart of the movie, playing a rather ignorant, insignificant man who worships Neruda and is inspired by him to become a poet too.Their relationship is realist, which also means cruel; for if Neruda means everything for the postman Mario, for Neruda Mario is just an entertainment, someone to talk to but someone he'll forget nonetheless once he ends his exile on the Island.The finale is one of the saddest and most emotional I've ever seen in a movie, not just for its crushing irony, but also for the melancholy music composed by Luis Bacalov.In the end, this is a very simple movie, but it does everything right. The same can't be said of many masterpieces.