Last night, after a home-cooked meal and dessert with my friend Smithie, I asked her to choose a movie from my sparse DVD collection for us to watch. She chose Il Postino, a beautiful Italian film about a man living in a small fishing village in Italy whose life changes when he starts delivering the mail for the exiled Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. He learns about poetry, politics, and love.
The movie's strength lies in its quiet and well-mannered protagonist Mario--or rather, the wonderfully crafted portrayal of this character by the late Massimo Troisi. He co-wrote the script and died of a heart attack twelve hours after filming the movie. This makes the ending that much more tragic.
The following excerpt shown at the end of the film completely captures Mario's metamorphosis.
Poetry
And it was at that age ... Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.
--Pablo Neruda
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