VOL. XLVIII

A lovely and lyrical movie, nearly void of any dialogue; this strange and off-the-radar film was right up my alley (GODS of TRUE RANDOM, you are on a damn roll recently!). Don’t be scared of the synopsis:

The film comprises four phases, or 'turns', following Pythagoras. The turning of the phases occurs in Calabria where Pythagoras had his sect in Crotone. Pythagoras claimed he had lived four lives and this with his notion of metempsychosis is the structure of the film showing one phase and then turning into another phase.

You don’t need to know anything about Greek philosophy to get something out of this. It’s simply a beautiful meditation on the various life cycles in the natural world. A goat herder (1) dies and is reincarnated as a goat (2)…

The young goat dies under a great tree (3) and its spirit is harnessed by the great plant…

And after the tree is chopped down and used in a ceremony for the small town, its wood is turned into coal (4). Just a splendid and spectacular 88-minute film.