Le quattro volte : A Poetic Narrative of the Cycle of Life and Philosophical Boredom in Michelangelo Frammartino’s Cinema

Le Quattro Volte  ("The Four Times"), directed by Michelangelo Frammartino (2010), is a slow-paced, poetic film set in a mountainous village in Calabria, Italy. The narrative of the film is structured in four symbolic segments, each representing a stage in the cycle of life: human, animal, vegetal, and mineral. Its contemplative rhythm centers less on dialogue and more on visual impressions of nature and daily life. Indeed, spoken language is nearly absent, replaced by the rustling of trees, the tolling of distant bells, and animal sounds, forming a meditative sonic landscape. These formal choices transform Le quattro volte  into a "singular and beautiful meditation on the mysterious cycles of life," as we follow the soul’s journey from shepherd to goat, tree, and finally smoke and stone.

Narrative Structure and Events in Le Quattro Volte

Le quattro volte begins by presenting two key figures: a charcoal burner tending his kiln and an elderly shepherd who guides his goats through the majestic rural landscape. The narrative primarily follows the shepherd’s daily routine—herding, interacting with his dog, and his solitary return to the village. Gradually, the film reveals the simplicity of his life: evening rituals, consuming sacred dust mixed with water as a remedy, and eventually his death during Easter.

Upon the shepherd’s death, the herd passes quietly into other hands. With winter's end and spring’s arrival, the villagers gather for a ritual festivity involving the cutting and raising of a tall tree in the town square, in front of the church—an echo of fertility rites linked to seasonal rebirth(1).

Narrative Style and Aesthetic Composition

The film’s form resembles that of a slow cinema documentary; dialogue and musical score are absent, and the camera remains stationary in long takes. Renowned critic Roger Ebert noted: “The film is made without dialogue and often filmed in extended shots,”(2) implying that the viewer is not called upon for active interpretation, but rather for contemplation—even trance. Frammartino’s visual style is naturalistic and distant: almost everything is recorded from afar, with no evident manipulation. Characters, including the shepherd and his dog, are captured in minimal close-ups, often remaining peripheral within the frame. This detached camera style turns mundane rural life into a contemplative, timeless tale(3).

At the core of its visual language lies a blend of ethnographic detail and poetic structure. Frammartino avoids a conventional linear narrative, offering equal ontological dignity to man, animal, plant, and mineral. As Philip French observes in The Guardian, the film transcends humanistic or sociopolitical discourse, asking viewers to reflect on their position within the cosmos. Thus, the viewer becomes active through perception—invited to encounter life’s foundational rhythms: birth, death, and the continuity between humanity and nature(4).
 

Emotional and Spiritual Dimensions

By avoiding overt emotional cues and relying on stunning natural imagery, Le Quattro Volte penetrates into the realm of subdued feeling. As Ebert emphasizes, Le quattro volte suppresses “daily conversation” so that silence and natural sounds—wind, bells, animal cries—can dominate. This contemplative silence generates an ambivalent emotional atmosphere: serene wonder at nature’s beauty, interlaced with a gentle sorrow over life’s transience. Moments such as the herd sweeping through the village during the shepherd’s funeral, or the joyful birth of a goat, are simultaneously humorous and deeply moving—what one critic called “heavy, beautiful, and somehow sublimely comic.”

The open mountainous vistas, archaic rituals, quiet labors of shepherd and charcoal burner, and animal-human symbiosis gesture toward a metaphysical experience, one steeped in reflection and quiet transcendence(5).

Boredom and Time in Le Quattro Volte

Film scholar Piera Benedetti has examined Le Quattro Volte in relation to the philosophical concept of boredom (Langeweile), with particular reference to Heidegger. Although boredom can be interpreted through psychological, psychoanalytic, or neuroscientific lenses, Benedetti focuses on its ontological dimension. Specifically, boredom as understood in Heidegger—not in later existentialist terms, which diverge significantly from his.

In this Heideggerian frame, boredom is intertwined with temporality, particularly with duration and repetition. The text refrains from offering fixed definitions of these terms, acknowledging the complexity of their philosophical scope. Instead, Benedetti explores how boredom is rendered through formal cinematic strategies.

Frammartino’s method aligns with Heidegger’s idea that being discloses itself through withdrawal (Zurücknahme). In this context, withdrawal is manifest in the film’s aesthetics of slowness and subtraction(6)—where the world reveals itself by holding itself back.

Alienation and Defamiliarization

This is achieved in multiple cinematic elements:

1. Camera Work: A fixed, distanced camera frames the darkened interior of a church: a dying man, a woman preparing medicine, a silent statue, and the interplay of soft light and decaying icons. This visual stillness breaks conventional spatial perception. Cinema is typically spatial first, temporal second—but Frammartino reverses this, emphasizing time. Duration becomes cinematic substance itself. The repetition of nearly identical compositions—of the same village corner, the house, the enclosed yard, the narrow asphalt road—highlights temporal persistence.

2. Subtle Change: Within a seemingly inert space, even slight movement becomes perceptible. These minor events interrupt stillness:

1. A vehicle carrying timber
2. Villagers preparing for a religious festivity
3. A funeral procession
4. A herd of goats rushing through narrow alleys

These sequences reinforce the temporal texture of the film. As Heidegger puts it, “Time simultaneously reveals itself and speaks about itself—as that which makes everything possible.”

3. Sound: Natural sound—wind, distant bells, scattered coughs, lamb cries, burning wood—serves as an acoustic environment that thickens time. Here, sound is not decorative or atmospheric but existential. Like the image, it bears temporal weight.
 

All these formal elements aim to render time palpable—to make its slowness, density, and passing something we experience bodily. Through this, Le quattro volte  enables the viewer to sense the texture of existential boredom(7).

Critical Perspective

Benedetti’s interpretation is philosophically coherent, grounded in precise terminology. A “good” critique, in this view, is one that succeeds in articulating the relation between the film’s form and its expressive content(). Not all films that intend to say something achieve this on the level of form(8). Le Quattro Volte, according to Benedetti, does.

However, two reservations arise:

1. Camera and Naive Realism: Benedetti adopts the notion of the camera as witness rather than narrator—"observing being as it flows through time." Yet, from a phenomenological or Kantian standpoint, no object is given without the mediation of consciousness(9). Heidegger too insists that without Dasein, no disclosure occurs(10). Framing is never neutral; each chosen frame implies thousands excluded. Neutrality presupposes the absence of agency—something film can rarely achieve.

2. Direct vs. Mediated Time: The essay contrasts two modes of temporal experience:

1. Perceiving time directly
2. Perceiving time via formal cinematic devices

Each yields different epistemic consequences. In epistemology, assertions supported by evidence can lead to knowledge. Likewise, how one claims to experience time in the film will determine what evidential forms are invoked. In cinema, unlike in Being, time is external to us—it must be mediated. Hence, experiencing boredom and temporality in cinema differs fundamentally from Heidegger’s account of Dasein’s lived time.

This distinction reflects broader questions at the intersection of philosophy and art: How do different media tell truth? Can cinema deliver philosophical content, or merely suggest i(11)t?

Benedetti’s engagement with Heidegger and others attempts to illuminate the film’s engagement with time and mood. Yet, we must always ask: What does the film itself say—independently of theory? Perhaps the philosophical analysis is best read as a creative act in its own right, much like the film it addresses. Otherwise, as with Stanley Cavell, we risk oscillating endlessly between philosophy about film and philosophy in film.

Conclusion

Le Quattro Volte is a meditative and lyrical cinematic essay that symbolically depicts the cycle of life—human, animal, vegetal, and mineral—without dialogue, narrative urgency, or dramatic tension. It invites the viewer to reflect not only on what is seen but on the conditions of seeing itself.

References

• [1,4]. French, P. (2011).  Le Quattro Volte – review. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/may/29/le-quattro-volte-michelangelo-frammartino.

[2]. Ebert, R. (2011, June 15). Le Quattro Volte movie review (2011). RogerEbert.com.

 https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/le-quattro-volte-2011

[3].Sallon, E. (n.d.). The reception of Le Quattro Volte abroad. ItalianCinema.it. https://www.italiancinema.it/the-reception-of-le-quattro-volte-abroad/

[5]. Wexner Center for the Arts. (n.d.). Le Quattro Volte. WexArts. https://wexarts.org/film-video/le-quattro-volte

[6]. Heidegger, M. (1998). Letter on “Humanism” (F. A. Capuzzi, Trans.). In D. F. Krell (Ed.), Pathmarks (pp. 239–276). Cambridge University Press, p252, 271.

[7].Benedetti, P. (2019).  The Form of Boredom: The ‘Boring’ and the Aestheticisation of Time in Michelangelo Frammartino’s Le Quattro Volte (2014). King’s College London.

[8]. Levinson, J. (1981). Truth in music. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 40(2), 131-144.

[9]. Kant, I. (1998). Critique of pure reason (P. Guyer & A. W. Wood, Trans.). Cambridge University Press. (Original work published 1781/1787), B131–132

[10]. Heidegger, M. (2010). Being and time (J. Stambaugh, Trans., revised by D. J. Schmidt). SUNY Press, p 138-145

[11]. Hegel, G. W. F. (1975). Aesthetics: Lectures on fine art (T. M. Knox, Trans., Vol. 1). Oxford University Press, p 103-105