Week Seventeen: Il Postino (The Postman)

Il Postino: The Postman

1995

Directed by Michael Radford

Starring Philippe Noiret, Massimo Troisi, and Maria Grazia Cucinotta

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If you don’t like this film, fuck you.

Amazingly, that’s about all I’ve got to say on the topic. What an amazing stroke of luck I’ve had, in setting up this program, that I’ve been able to give myself a chance to be exposed to this forgotten gem. The movie was basically made for me: relatively short, focused on a small handful of interesting characters, light enough to pass as a comedy yet touching on themes of identity, political strife, and the role of art in society. An Academy which would elevate Braveheart over this is a demonstrably sick one, which was clearly the case after the bloodbath the year before (finally up for full discussion next week!) and strikes me as far more tragic than the bittersweet conclusion of this film.

When I first put together the Almost Oscars itinerary, I came across Il Postino (translated and marketed as The Postman in the United States) for the first time in my life. I was dimly aware of Braveheart, and had seen Babe and Apollo 13 at the base theater with my dad (it should be noted that I was six at the time). Perhaps this tiny Italian-produced film never showed up my tiny radar because the market for such films on Air Force bases in North Dakota isn’t that big. In any case, it was a stroke more interesting than the somewhat known quantity of my other option, Sense and Sensibility. We’ve done our time with Ang Lee already.

Il Postino is a fictional tale built around the real life political exile Pablo Neruda, Chilean poet and Marxist. While it is historical fact that he at one point lived on the island of Capri while travelling Europe, the rest of the film takes this well-trodden tale and uses it as the basis of a story. Mario Ruoppolo (Troisi) is the middle-aged son of a poor fisherman, living in the sort of picturesque Mediterranean cliff side village that inexplicably exists outside of postcards. He’s down on the idea of becoming a fisherman himself, but it’s not like the essentially pre-Industrial economy of the island intends to provide him other work. By chance, however, the post office of the island is looking for part time work. The job? Handle all incoming mail for the island’s new celebrity, Senor Neruda (Noiret) of Chile. Mario is told by his boss, a communist himself, that Neruda is a great man who deserves the utmost deference and respect. As these instructions are delivered to a wistful, somewhat restless bumpkin regarding one of the pre-eminent artists of the twentieth century, of course these instructions will be ground to dust by the film’s end.

Neruda lives some distance from the rest of the small town, requiring Mario to bicycle there. The first encounters between these two men are awkward, halting things that one would expect as two different worlds meet for the first time. Slowly, Mario begins to examine the works of Neruda as a way of striking up conversations. In doing so, he begins to examine his own life and motivations. This life examination finds expression when Mario meets a beautiful woman named Beatrice (Cucinotta), and shares his feelings and thoughts on the matter with Neruda. The relationship between the two slowly evolves from professional to instructional, and finally to a wonderfully unlikely friendship between a humble Italian postal worker and a world-renown poet and communist from Latin America.

That’s now how the story ends, which I shall ruin for you now. Neruda is eventually invited back to his home country (also true in the world we inhabit), leaving Mario alone with his new modes of expression and a stunningly beautiful wife. He misses his friend Pablo, and begins to work up the courage to write and share poetry. The coda has Senor Neruda returning to find Mario’s wife and young child in the village inn, only to be informed that Mario had been killed when police broke up a communist rally prior to the birth of his son. Mario had gone there to read a poem dedicated to Pablo. This rally is shown in black-and-white newsreel stock, reminiscent of the means by which Mario first learned that Neruda would first be coming to his tiny island. We are left with the site of Noiret standing on a beach, his back to the cliffs of the island, followed by poetry from the man he portrayed.

Uffda! I liked the ending, but it was quite sad. Now let’s add to that sadness by explaining that apparently twelve hours after the filming of Il Postimo, Troisi suffered a fatal heart attack in Rome. He had been postponing surgery to finish shooting the film. Radford (whose only other film I recognize is the John Hurt masterpiece Nineteen Eighty-Four) would thank Troisi in the credits of the film for his work, and the Academy even honored his memory with a posthumous Best Actor nomination. That Nicholas Cage won the award that year should only serve as proof of Alex Navarro’s working thesis that Cage is our greatest living actor.

By the way, have you seen the Cage film “Vampire’s Kiss”? If not, go watch it and come back. Your life will be changed forever. Proof? The picture above is a still from that amazing film.

I digress. Troisi’s name was not known to me prior to today, and I don’t intend to take a deep dive into his entire career. What I can say is that he delivered a very good performance as a muted, humble man from a small town, in the presence of a near-god. He was able to prevent humility from sliding into simplicity or caricature, instead coming off as a person going through an inner transformation within a strict socioeconomic context. His world is the same world as it always has been; what is changing is the lenses he uses to interpret it. That’s not an easy thing to convey to an audience, and Troisi does a particularly fine job at it. That he worked along with the director to adapt the screenplay also speaks to his mind as a filmmaker. If this is to be the world’s only way of getting to see Massimo Troisi, it can sleep soundly in the knowledge that the man was in top form here.

There are a handful of lumps, sure. Some of the editing in the film is pretty dodgy, with Lucas-esque dissolves for flashbacks and strange jump cuts between locations. There’s also something to say for annunciation, which feels strange as I am not an Italian speaker myself and required subtitles to enjoy the film in any capacity. Shitting on this film for those criticisms is the height of madness: Il Postino was all heart. Not a showy movie by any means, but an honest movie. Everything about it, from the film stock looking like it was about ten years old to the out-dated posters and DVD cover, all seem to be gently smiling at people like me who are stumbling into the movie for the first time. It politely says hello, and asks if you’d like to watch this little old movie that it is. Just a fantastic little experience.

WAS IT ANY GOOD? Hell yes. As charming a movie as you will ever see, Il Postino is a movie I’d share with anybody. Hell, it would be a great date film if you were reasonably sure the other party could handle the ending. Like A Serious Man (and when I say that, you should pay attention), the film reminds the viewer that you need nothing more than a good story to carry the film. You can ride out technical bumps, and even some dodgy performances (which this particular movie doesn’t have) if the story you are telling is good enough. This one is more than good enough, it’s stonking great by jove!

SHOULD IT HAVE WON? Why would you make me choose between this and Babe? Babe holds the distinction of being the last G-rated film to be nominated for Best Picture as of this year. In stark contrast to it, the wildly violent and overbearing Braveheart won. Parts of that film are pretty great, and I’m willing to separate the stupid shit in Mel Gibson’s personal life from his film career. Even with that said, I don’t see how the Academy managed to pass over both the greatest family film of the 1990s, and an excuse to pretend that they gave a shit about an obscure, dead Italian actor, for a three hour film with no award-worthy acting performances. Oh yeah, did I mention Braveheart won no awards for acting? That seems a little odd, right? Want to know the next film to pull off that feat? The Return of the King, aka the Seabiscuit killer.

FINALLY GONNA DO 1994 NEXT WEEK. That means I will, at long last, watch Pulp Fiction. We will get to the bottom of what, by many estimations, is the most important film of the entire decade and perhaps the biggest gut punch Hollywood received since 1967’s Bonnie and Clyde. I am really looking forward to not having everybody and their grandmother act just amazed that somebody could have gone over twenty years without seeing Pulp Fiction, as if it should be some sort of inevitable function of being alive after some point in time. See ya next week!

Other thoughts

• Multiple reviews should be happening next week. I’ll let you ponder that.
• In addition to those reviews, I have an impossibly important job interview next Friday. Getting that job could lead to one or two changes to the way this site works, which would be really cool.
• I’ve been looking into wrestling recently, to see what has happened in the twelve or so years that I’ve been out of the loop. To summarize, it has all sucked very badly.