Nominated for Best Actor (Massimo Troisi), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Music, Best Director, and Best Picture, "Il Postino" is a tender tale of love and poetry on a small island in the Mediterranean Sea, inspired by an incident in the life of Pablo Neruda, the Chilean poet who was briefly exiled, in 1952, for his communist ideas which have often got him into trouble...
'Il Postino' is a beautiful, heartbreaking movie, funny in its simplicity and honest dialog...
Massimo Troisi leaves his final legacy in the role of a shy, hesitant and uncultured postman who possesses the heart of a poet with truly peculiar observations, such as 'the whole world is the metaphor for something else,' often without realizing how exciting his comments are...
Director Michael Radford had the care to create a wonderful film which floats on the love of words, rhythm, and imagery... His movie is much heightened by a music score that includes quotes, paraphrases and Argentinean tangos...
His film turns out to be a great little movie... It deals with a friendship between a lethargic villager, who takes the modest job of delivering letters to the celebrated poet living in a secluded area... Poetry becomes their connection...
Mario Ruoppolo is a simple man with a complicated set of values who rides his bicycle climbing the hard road to Neruda's cozy home and with his timid manners delivers the armful of correspondence to the single customer of the island...
A polite Neruda shows little interest in his personal postman, but he favors him, one day, with his autograph, signing one of his books with the words 'Regards, Pablo Neruda.' Nevertheless as time passes the 'poet of love' becomes a bit more friendly, intrigued by Mario's enthusiasm regarding his poetry and poetic manner of speaking...
Mario, impressed that almost every letter delivered to Neruda is from a female, couldn't understand how his new resident, despite his advancing age, has such magical power over women... So he tries, with his simple way of thinking, to understand all the secrets of the exalted poet, sharing his thoughts with him... He becomes increasingly curious, asking a lot of questions about the mystical creation of poetry, forcing the fascinating celebrity to reveal some of the unexposed materials of his artistic vision... Neruda introduces Mario to the verbal rupture of metaphors, attempting to teach them to his anxious pupil... The two men discover an unexpected friendship based on their mutual view that life should be a framework for seduction and romance...
As the film goes on, Mario, crafted with a tender spirit, attempts, through Pablo, a gentle intervention and poetry to win over the woman he has fallen for, Beatrice Russo - played by Sicilian fashion model Maria Grazia Cucinotta...
Becoming in a slow way his 'Latin Cyrano de Bergerac,' Neruda guides his postman into romance, but refuses to write a poem that could charm his young passionate Beatrice...
To attract the prettiest girl in town, Mario becomes a bit of a poet himself... But when he finds his own words insufficient to his romantic mission, he appropriates one of his tutor's sensuous poems, and protests, when discovered, that "Poetry doesn't belong to those who write it, but to those who need it."
Unbelievably his 'lyrical words' fascinate the sensual bombshell who was playing a mean game of table soccer in a low cut dress, but disturb greatly her disapproving aunt Donna Rosa, who sees that Mario is contaminating her niece with his nice words... Nevertheless the postman wins the beautiful Beatrice and convinces her to marry him...
Heartbreak comes when Neruda receives a telegram that he can return to the country he loves so much... From here on, an extended epilogue with smiles, tears and regret, takes the story on... And the film almost breathes lyrical tenderness in its depiction of an honest man who longs so much for love...
Mario, who has not received any word or greeting from the poet and had remarked that it's quite normal for the poet not to remember him, returns to the poet's villa to revisit the place that had once been alive with the sounds and sights of emotional discovery... In the silence that now surrounds it, he realizes that the poet has taken all the beautiful things away with him...
He gets the idea to create a 'live' poem for his dearest friend Don Pablo... An outdoors tape to let him listen to the wonderful sounds of the island, from the small and big waves at the Cala di Sotto, to the wind on the cliffs, to the wind through the bushes, to the sad nets belonging to his father, to the church bell of Our Lady of Sorrow, to the starry sky over the island, to Pablito's heartbeat...
Philippe Noiret (best remembered for 'Cinema Paradiso') charms us once again as the affectionate mentor to Mario... He convinces the postman that poets are quite human but warns Mario about the old Dictaphone saying, 'Even the most sublime ideas sound ridiculous if heard too often.'
The sets and the cinematography, accompanied by an Oscar Winning Score, create a wonderful atmosphere of the remote poor island with no running water, of the modest houses with pealing plaster, of the Rocky cliffs overlooking the blue Mediterranean, of the post-war fishing village under the shades of rose and salmon...
Like love itself, some great movies seem surprisingly human... Delbert Mann's 'Marty' was one, Cameron Crowe's 'Say Anything...' was another, and now Michael Radford's "Il Postino" is exceptional... His film stands tall in its own right as a 'must see' movie... It's tough to imagine anyone not liking it... It simply revives our memories, and breaks our heart...
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