The Four Times (2010) by Michelangelo Frammartino is one of the most perfect yet peculiar films of the 21st century. It observes the cycle of people, animals, and the soul through humour and poeticism. The value of Frammartino’s film only increased in the decade that it took before his next film was released.
The semi-documentary The Hole takes us to Italy at the height of the 1960s boom. While the tallest building in Europe is being built in the north, a small team of scientists descends into the third deepest cave in the world. The film depicts this journey as well as the daily life of a nearby village.
Shepherds gather around a campfire, while the villagers surround a black-and-white television: the understanding about the mysteries of the universe is expanded by diving into the depths of entertainment, animal imitations, and geological layers of the earth. In the beginning, the camera steps outside as in Plato’s allegory of the cave, but true knowledge can be found by returning into the depths. The icons and celebrities of the time are just disappearing dust in the face of universal mysteries.
The film can be placed in the same emphatic frontline of contemporary Italian documentaries and hybrid films made famous around the world by Gianfranco Rosi, Pietro Marcello, and Roberto Minervini. Frammartino’s curious camera has been baptised with the gentle humour of Roy Andersson and Jacques Tati, which is complemented by heartbreakingly beautiful natural imagery.
Otto Kylmälä