Movie very slowlie
‘Tis also the season to watch movies, and last night I was lucky enough to watch a remarkable movie. I’d first heard of The Tree of Wooden Clogs in an interview with Mike Leigh who called the movie a masterpiece in the Telegraph excellent Film makers on film series, since then I’d carried the tip around in my head as a one to definitely watch.
The first thing to remember about this film is that its three hours long and you’re definitely not bustled through with shocks, horrors or even much of a plot. The movie, or rather movie-very-slowlie, takes place in a peasant tenement in the Italian countryside in the 1890s. The director, Ermanno Olmi, stays true to this setting with very naturalistic performances and no extravagant plot devices. It’s almost an anti-film, rather than acting we see the protagonists simply behaving, there isn’t much of a story, instead we’re shown a series of events unfolding.
It’s an incredibly beautiful film, but once again this isn’t laboured… I only gradually became aware of the hypnotic symmetry in the gloom and grubby poverty of the peasants lives. The film shows us the grime and hard slog too easy to ignore in Rembrandt. The characters pray and sing, church bells and the clump of clogs keep time – their lives are sacralised, and at times the film itself seems like a prayer. Olmi, however is a Marxist as well as a Catholic, and so the poverty and suffering borne of class conflict are central to the film too. The Tree of Wooden Clogs – if you can take it, there’s a masterpiece waiting for you.
Tags: Daily Telegraph, Ermanno Olmi, Mike Leigh, The Tree of Wooden Clogs