Il Postino

If you have any kind of a heart, any trace of humanity in your soul, you will be moved by this film. Il Postino takes the cliché feel sorry for the protagonist story and makes it an emotional masterpiece. I don't really know where to start... should I explain WHY I feel it is a great film, or WHO has made the film great, or HOW it moves me? Or should I echo the film itself and write poetry about the film? Perhaps I'll find a good compromise, an equal medium between the intellectual analysis (redundant redundant?) and open heart string songs. That's exactly where this film is, after all, in that reverent middle ground between experiment and document. This film is technically ideal, the cinematography could NOT be any better and the sets, costumes, casting, acting, etc. is all exceptionally wonderful and convincing and enjoyable and BEAUTIFUL. The script and the ART of the movie is also a diamond among chunks of salt (when you don't need salt, that is). It's artistry is magnificent. How? Well, the poetry of Massimo Troisi's performance is an achievement well above that of many great actors' most heralded work. It is a full head above many benchmark performances we hold deified in a silver oxide hall of champions. Massimo pulls this role off so well, that it is very hard for me to believe that he was an actor. I have trouble understanding that he could have ever been anybody besides Il Postino.

Not only is this film convincing and believable, it is FANTASTIC. The poetry is the dinghy that carries the fantasy along side the story of the film. It stimulates the imagination which is treated to the most beautiful tapestry on film in the past 10 years on which it may blend emotion with history and create a CONTENTMENT of voyeurism, something remarkable indeed! Watching this film gives me pleasure. I want to WATCH. Other films inspire me to direct my own, or to write a story or a song or to sleep or to laugh or to even dream. While Il Postino is more than good enough to do all of that, it moreso IMPELS me to watch, and WATCHING is the point of all of these things, isn't it?

Il Postino has it all: comedy, romance, sentimentality, action (sort of), drama, love, fear, struggle, happiness, sadness, wonder, excitement, rejection, beauty, eloquence, and the profound. This film goes there, into profundity, into the MEANING of little things and how they make the BIG nes. It flows like water and is like the Mediterranean Sea itself: unique, beautiful and vital.