The Tree of Wooden Clogs

In under 30 minutes, a childlike sense of fascination and immersion is achieved [the likes of which I've only rarely experienced], and it never lets go, not even after it ends. There's nothing overly impressive to comment on, it just all comes together so remarkably well. Delicately handling multiple characters and sentiments with ease.

Like DAYS OF HEAVEN, this concerns rhythms of all kinds - diurnal, nocturnal, seasonal, cultivation, reproduction, Bach - but also the arrhythmia of the initially slow but accelerating pace of historical change. In relation to all that, the care cultivated by faith provides ways of living together, but their only resorts when confronted with injustice are dignity and memory. That something like the aristocratic THE LEOPARD receives far more attention from critics and historians seems telling.

Be warned this is slow, really really slow. Still, if you're up for it, it can be an extremely rewarding experience. Olmi captures the monotony and small triumphs of peasant life and the prevalence of religion extremely well and the film has its share of happy and sad moments, all played to perfection by a wonderful cast.

A sensitive tribute to the everyday chores of four poor families on a tired, old farm at the end of the 19th century. Never sentimental but constantly warm hearted, forbearing and humane. A film shaped with colossal diligence and a big fucking heart.

Like Yi Yi by way of Bresson. The ultimate counterpoint to the phoniness of Italian Neo-Realism Olmi is so against in all his works. A testament to the empathy tool of cinema, that we can know technically so little about the faces inhabiting the frame and yet feel so deeply for them. The boy struggling with his titular clogs, the man unable to resist the temptation of a coin in the dirt during an anti-plutocratic rant, and the newlyweds' journey to society. The ending is devastating perfection.

A unique and sublime piece of cinema, The Tree of Wooden Clogs is a 3-hour-long slice of the life of Italian peasantry before the industrial revolution. Lacking a unified plot, the film consists instead of various sequences forming a complex, atmospheric and naturalistic portrait of a simple farming community. Olmi directs a great cast with his typical hyper-realism, and the photography is gorgeous.

There's no plot to speak of, just a series of minor anecdotes. It captures the sense of time and place, depicting their struggles without asking the audience for pity, and without portraying the characters as noble salt-of-the-earth types wronged by a cruel class system (except at the end, but by that point it's been earned). It's all very matter-of-fact. The cast is quite good, and the photography, although not spectacular, has a pastoral grace to it. But it does require some patience.

Beautiful details and human observation are to be found in this pensively paced drama about italian peasants that harks to the very primal idea of film as a document of how our lives are lived.

Beautiful! This feels like a documentary where every frame is a painting. It also reminds me of the beginning of Bertolucci's 1900, although that take is even more interesting.

Pretty and well made technically, it is effective in depicting a different way of life in a different time. Unfortunately, that way of life and time are kind of boring, and at over three hours, this drags a lot. It's just very, very slow and had a lot of trouble keeping my attention despite the obvious craftsmanship that went into it. The kind of movie that I admire to some degree but can't really enjoy.

Libra

This is about as organic as narrative filmmaking gets, a complete commitment to authenticity and detail, indeed impressive and appreciated, but for me eliciting only a few sparse moments of meaningful reaction. About films of a similar vein, I prefer Shindo's more lyrical The Naked Island and Troell's more characterized couplet of The Emigrants and The New Land.

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These characters were "salt of the earth" people. This was a "salt of the earth" movie. Certainly pretty to look at.

Neorealist masterpiece, that frames its shots like paintings and properly fleshes out its people.

The digressive and unfocused narrative structure of the film (combined with its length) makes it feel slow and dull at points, but it does have some fascinating moments (the titular clog scene and the aftermath), and the "slice of life" approach leads to some surprisingly tense moments - the married couple's first trip together felt strange and unpredictable, so I could share their anxieties leaving the home I'd spent over two hours watching.

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#268

Ah dang - just read another review in here that said just what I wantedto say about this film. So yeah, "the monotony and small triumphs of peasant life". A stunning film.

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