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Sorry, this movie sucks

It is a performances centric movie

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

I adore a hundred scenes from this film and it captures the rhythms and sorrows of the Italian peasants who no longer owned their own land but were virtual serfs. Till the ending I would have given this10 stars easily. The detailed and loving and closely observed world of the film is a treasure in itself. The color is soft, subtle and dreamy. The no-actors are jaw-droppingly good. (Spoiler alert) Now the classic peasant is if anything resourceful, sparing and wastes nothing. So my credulity goes OUT the window when the father cuts down an entire tree to make one wooden shoe for his son so that his son can go to school AND that tree is one of a very long avenue of venerable, trained and neatly spaced trees belonging to the landowner and that entire landscape of trees is ruined by the destruction of one tree my next thought after the waste of an entire tree is that the peasant is insensitive to the simple harmony of the regularly spaced avenue of trees that is part of his own life as well. I am being kind giving this eight stars out of ten. When a poor peasant and his family are thrown out of their homes and I, in the audience are cheering their departure - the filmmaker has screwed up his message.

In true neo-realistic vein THE TREE OF WOODEN CLOGS follows the lives of a quartet of peasant families striving for daily existence in turn of the century Italy. There's no conventional plot here but a series of ritualistic vignettes that flawlessly capture their strenuous survival over a course of a year. A grandfather demonstrates and passes the secrets behind his early tomatoes, a bright five year old trudges miles to attend school wearing a pair of clogs, a devout widow with six children prays for their ailing livestock, a young couple's restrained courtship and subsequent marriage, a pregnant mother foregoes the services of a midwife to save for warm clothing. All these threads are expertly interwoven and are blended with a sense of humanity and poetic optimism.Couple of movies that instantly spring to mind which succeeded in capturing the monotony emanating from its character(s) this arrestingly are - JEANNE DIELMAN (which was a brilliant character study within the contemporary setting) & THE NAKED ISLAND (another ruminative dissection of a farming family boasting stunning imagery). TTOWC on the other hand is more epic in scale and works like a gritty documentary featuring non-actors. There are couple of gruesome sequences of a hog being disemboweled and of a goose-beheading which purely serve to highlight the harsh realities of peasant life. TTOWC is also relatively more interactive while the above two were virtually dialogue-less.I'd only seen Olmi's IL POSTO before this - which was an indelibly honest coming of age film. And considering the fact that he wrote, directed, shot and edited this meditative epic - speaks volumes of cinematic acuity. He had that unique ability of making the mundane almost miraculous.

"The Tree of Wooden Clogs" was a unique experience for me. I felt that Mr. Olmi's achievement was the creation of a movie that has to be viewed twice. First it was a marvelous recreation of peasant life with its hardship, fortitude, and community. To get such performances out of untrained actors who communicate with the audience so beautifully without words. We get to know these people and to love them.On a second viewing, I see a film that points to the hardships and inequities of a society dominated by autocracy in which religious faith provides its only solace. Yet even here, it portray a church comfortable in this reliance, wanting no part of the rebellion happening around it, something of complicity in keeping the peasantry where they are.I come to this after reading that Mr. Olmi is both socialist and devout Catholic, positions that some feel are mutually exclusive.It's a wonderful movie, not a perfect one-- the pacing could have been better-- but a bonus getting two pictures out of one when so many film makers would have created an inseparable hybrid in its place.

Director Ermanno Olmi's ambition is colossal, and he will settle for nothing less than an epic about the whole spectrum of human existence. The film is unusual in the sense that it rarely focuses on a character or a plot. Yet Olmi threads a unity with mastery unmatched by anything else I've seen before. Also, the background score provides a nice touch. But this is where the good things end for me.The film suffers from an abundance of religious propaganda. The scene where a terminally ill animal recovers miraculously after drinking some sort of holy water really disgusted me. Also, I felt like the film idealizes peasant life to some extent - especially the women. It seems like the only thing the women do is pray. (Of course, the director may have a point here.)I think the lack of a dedicated cinematographer shows. The focus is off in a number of shots, exposure within a scene is not always consistent. There are interior scenes where you can see two or three overlapping shadows of the same person cast by different sources - supposed to be candles. But candles don't cast that kind of hard-edged opaque shadow. I am not sure if it's just me, but the lighting seems really amateur.While the film is beautiful, a work of genius and is a must see for anyone interested in serious filmmaking, beware of the religious stuffs, if you are not into that kind of things.