Torneranno i prati

The title of Ermanno Olmi's 2012 film Torneranno i Prati (Greenery will bloom again) suggests a somewhat optimistic view of the horrors of war in general, but there seems to be little grounds for such optimism in the specifics of the film's account of the fate of a group of soldiers on the Alpine North-Eastern front during the winter of 1917. Inspired by the story La Paura (1921) by Federico De Roberto, and a personal reflection of his father's experiences during the First World War, perhaps Olmi's outlook is just a more realistic one - greenery will indeed bloom again after the wars have ended, but the healing is also presumably just a stage in the endless cycle of war.

In a remote outpost, in the depths of winter, a small company of Italian soldiers are entrenched on the North-Easter front, beaten down by the constant Austrian bombardments. Half of the troops are suffering from a fever brought by a flu epidemic, and only the strongest can survive it. With little comprehension of the reality of their position, an order comes in from the high commmand to create a new outpost, since the communications with the existing base have been compromised.

It's a suicide mission. The first volunteer doesn't get more than a few yards before the terrifying report of a sniper rifle rings out. The second does actually shoot himself rather than go out, while the Captain of the unit, wracked by the fever, has no choice but to surrender his rank. It's a grim situation depicted with true horror for the conditions and the prospects of the men out there. But the film, as the title hints, is not without its shoots of greenery, the men taking what little comfort they can from little glimpses of nature around them - a mouse, a fox, a larch tree. Even these however are not immune from the horrors of war.

The beauty of the cinematography - crisp tinted black-and white, with desaturated hand-colouration effects - doesn't prettify the subject as much as emphasise the horror of war in such a place, where for all its apparent beauty, nature can also be just as harsh and cruel. The passing of time and the seasons can also bring about healing, but have a cruel side. Life will continue on, the greenery will bloom again, and no-one will remember what once happened in this place. Until the cycle brings it around once again.

I'm yet to see Ermanno Olmi's acclaimed The Tree of Wooden Clogs, which is also my favourite director Mike Leigh's all-time favourite film, but I intend to soon, so it was interesting diving into his career with his latest. Greenery Will Bloom Again is a sparse and slight film. It's only just over an hour and doesn't opt for complex characters, conflict or narrative. It's more about the melancholy of the mood and the balance between hope and hopelessness in war. The genre is one of the few that can get away without selecting a character to lead the whole piece, ala Malick's The Thin Red Line, so it feels like a cluster of sequences surrounding a situation, but that helps retain its ethereal atmosphere. It's a little held back by the fact that it's been promoted for the 100th Anniversary of its events and for the viewing of people who are suckers for the material, but it's profound final line bolsters the whole film to a transcendent level that shows just how intelligent and sensitive the film was the whole time.

8/10

As there is just one review here, and extremely negative, it is mandatory to write mine.

Ermanno Olmi is, and always has been, the poet of silence. In fact, his first movie (Il tempo si è fermato, film 1958) was about a mountain dam keeper, living in the silence of mountains that, by the way, I happen to know very well.

This Torneranno i Prati (meaning, The Meadows Will Return) is not a war movie: it is a movie about war. If you expect to see brave soldiers assaulting the enemy with the sun in front and screaming "Geronimo", don't go to see this one. There are killed people, there is also some cannon bombing, but, for instance, the enemies are never seen. He is "so close that you can hear them breathing", but they are never shown.

The plot is simple: it is the story of one single night of World War I, during a snow covered winter, on a mountain site where the real war was. Everything happening in the movie had happened in real: it is not said if it happened all during the same night, and in the same place, but every single fact is real.

The movie is made of a lot of silence, filled by the inner thoughts, expectations, fears, scare, hope and desperation of these people, that are men before being soldiers. This is about war, it stupidity, it tells how horrible and stupid war is. Ermanno Olmi shows an incredibly deep compassion for all these soldiers, and actually, in the theater, more than one handkerchief appeared toward the end of the movie (including mine).

The music is sparse and minimal, but really fitting. The mountain landscapes, under a full moon, are just gorgeous: only a live experience of that can be better.

The movie was shown the first time on November 4th, anniversary of the end of World War I in Italy, in front of the President of the Italian Republic, and, simultaneously, in other 100 countries, including all that participated to that war.

I am looking forward for the DVD, this is a movie to see and see again.

This, together with Nolan's following, was among the shortest films I've ever seen. A short runtime doesn't necessarily mean that the film is bad: take, for instance, the aforementioned "The Following". In this case, I felt like seeing a spin-off 1-hour special that is inspired by Band of Brothers more than else.

I'd like first to state that I'm not a guy who mistakingly got in this film, and because of its slow pace, its lack of action, figured it being a bad movie. I actually found its pace one of the positive things, but I want to write about what was good in this film in the conclusive part of the review.

I hoped to see a film with great visuals. Sure, there were some, but most of the film felt very fake, even for a film. Just like Eastwood did in Letters from Iwo Jima, Olmi had for the film a very desaturated look. Unlike in Iwo Jima, in this film it made everything feel very artificial, it revealed the studio lighting (it felt very evident that all of the night scenes had enhanced studio lighting or were shot at daytime and darkened in post production). This aspect distracted me a lot.

The story is set during one single night, and focuses on a very small group of troops. The premise was interesting, and, if delivered better, could have made a good film. However this is not the case here. In fact it felt like the war was being fought somewhere entirely else, and they weren't involved if not during the two bombing scenes. Now, at the end, the film makes it clear that this is a film that has the ambitiousness of retelling generally WWI on the Italian front. I don't know if it was because of the lack of funds or budget, or an intentional choice, but Italian cinema already proved that can sustain a film with a larger budget (and displaying battles as well): Uomini Contro by Francesco Rosi. While Uomini Contro is generally considered a great WWI film, I personally feel it aged less well than, say, Sergio Leone films, hence a new retelling of WWI on the Italian front wouldn't be a heresy, but this film felt too small scoped and in fact too short to be able to retell WWI. It shows a very limited range of the aspects of WWI: the nearly impossible demands made by officers, bombings, fear, weather-related difficulties, desperation in war. Not once it addressed combat, the mere existence of an enemy, gas (it is set in 1917, when gas was copiously deployed in the war), to be fair, it couldn't make feel tension to the viewer.

Two things it did well: it displayed italians the right way (Rosi's Uomini Contro didn't work that much on this aspect). Italian troopers of WWI, due to their regional provenience, talked to each other in very different dialects and sub-languages. During this film, most of the characters do so. Another thing was the slow pace. Due to its limited time frame it was able to show how slow war sometimes is. That said, I didn't feel that this movie brought anything new to the table. Not new wonderful shots of WWI which today's technology could give to us, not the feel through a modern film of the tension, but rather the usual aspects of degradation and misery in war that many other films delivered better.

The film is boring, slow and badly acted. The authors seem narcolepsy and while talking take on average 2 minutes say three words. Takes 1 hour (thankfully) more than a few minutes documentary of period films, which are the most interesting thing. do not There is no plot, assembly is terrible and sometimes you do not understand even the correct sequence of events or where they got the characters that were up to the previous scene. But the worst of all is that to achieve public money have been spent, not know under what criteria. Certain films should be left to produce the authors themselves to make sure they fail and not may propose such stuff to the public.