Il Postino

Sometimes a book leads to a movie and sometimes the other way around. As I began searching for more information about Pablo Neruda, I saw a DVD on Netflix which I vaguely recall hearing about years ago but had never seen.

Il Postino is the story of Mario, a humble Italian postman, who had little direction to his life until coincidence changed everything. He learned that the famous (infamous to some since Neruda was a passionate communist) poet, Pablo Neruda, was living in exile at the edge of their village.

Delivering mail each day to Neruda, he saw the passion with which Neruda lived his life, he admired his ability to evoke feelings with words and asked him questions about poetry. These questions led to a friendship, between these two very different men, that is at the heart of the story. Mario began by thinking he could learn how to attract women to himself if he could find words such as Neruda wrote, but he learned so much more about life, purpose and to appreciate the place where he lived.

The film, subtitled, is beautifully filmed in Italy with a great cast. The reality of these actors, how they made me feel that, yes, they were those people, made me also aware how often films are cast poorly with people who look and feel nothing like those they are supposedly portraying.

It was even more poignant knowing that the postman, Massimo Troisi, only 40 years old, died to finish making it. Perhaps he would have anyway as he had a heart damaged by rheumatic fever as a child, but he saw this story of a simple postman and life as so important that he put off treatment to get it completed, dying the next day.

I won't go more into the film because it would spoil it for anyone who has yet to see it. It was nominated for Academy Awards which it richly deserved. After seeing it on Netflix, I bought a copy of it at Amazon. It will be a movie to watch again.

Photos are clips from: Il Postino and Il Postino