'Le Quattro Volte' offers a transformative look at a soul's cycle of life

You'll hear words being spoken in Michelangelo Frammartino's extraordinary second feature, "Le Quattro Volte," but none that require translation or subtitling. That's because human beings are merely an equal presence in the film's grand, nonverbal scheme of things, no more important than the other "characters" in the film, including goats, trees and huge man-made kilns for making charcoal.

The film "encourages us to liberate our perspective," writes Frammartino in a director's statement. "It urges the viewer to seek out the invisible connection which breathes life into everything that surrounds us."

If that sounds a little too much like "May the Force be with you," never fear. Frammartino's "invisible connection" is no Jedi mind trick. Instead, this bold Italian director (who names Béla Tarr, Robert Bresson and Andrei Tarkovsky as primary influences) has applied his unique vision to the Pythagorean doctrine of metempsychosis, or the transmigration of souls.

By following one soul through "le quattro volte," or "the four times" of its revolving cycle of life (namely human, animal, vegetable and mineral), the film becomes a transcendent experience that demands the viewer's attentive participation as it miraculously straddles the line between the orchestrated epiphanies of fiction and the simple, unadorned reality of documentary.

Not coincidentally for Frammartino, the Greek philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras lived (during the sixth century B.C.) in what is now Calabria, the southernmost region of Italy. With family ties to the region, Frammartino shot his first film, "Il Dono," there in 2003. He returns again here, within the confines of a tiny, near-abandoned mountain village, to create a four-chapter film that somehow manages, in 88 mesmerizing minutes, to encompass the entirety of existence.

Thus an old shepherd (Giuseppe Fuda) dies, and a baby goat is born into his herd. The kid wanders from the herd, apparently doomed, and a magnificent fir tree assumes its place in the cycle of life. The tree is felled by villagers for use in an ancient ritual, and then chopped into logs for the kilns, where it will transform into charcoal. The end is the beginning, the cycle never-ending.

It all seems so simple, so obvious, but "Le Quattro Volte" can only be fully appreciated in retrospect, after "the four times" have quietly, almost secretly revealed their interconnectedness. Along the way, Frammartino has included — or chanced upon — surprises and revelations that truly liberate our perspective from the human-focused conventions of storytelling.

Jeff Shannon: j.sh@frontier.com