While the economic boom of North Italy’s Sixties is turning most people’s stares up at the brutalist marvels of wealth and progress, a team of young speleologists goes the opposite way—south and down, chasing the mystery of an unknown abyss. While their descent slowly progresses, an old shepherd squeezes a few drops of water from a wet cloth into the mouth of a dying man. As his last breath is taken, the explorers reach the bottom of the hole. A puddle of water, and a beautiful gesture made in silence, as if the place demanded a certain religious respect—that’s the end of it.
Michelangelo Frammartino’s cinema is one of echoes and poetic connections. His sensitivity reminds me of Apichatpong Weerasethakul. The clarity of his camera language is staggering as the beauty he frames—nothing, so he says, compared to that of the actual location. Discreet, perhaps neglected, like the world he portrays is one the brightest directors of our time.
Not even once I blinked,
I couldn’t miss a single frame.
I let my breathing join the sounds
of men and beasts, the noise of stones
as they get swallowed by the earth,
the electric stillness of a time
remote in summer.
My heartbeat echo
the eternal pulse of life and death,
and nature.
