On watching Il Postino

Barely recovering from watching Il Postino... what a tribute to poets and poetry...
It will take time for me to recover from this film enough to write about it.

THE STORY

For those who have not seen the film... The Poet Pablo Neruda is in exile and takes off from his native country, Chile, to stay in an italian island until the ban on his entry is lifted. Most of the people in the island are illiterate and so a postman is needed to serve the mailing needs of just the poet and his wife. The villagers, especially the postman and the post master are excited that so famous a man should be staying in their village.

Slowly a relationship develops between the postman and the poet. Infected by the poet's love for imagery, the postman starts writing poetry. He befriends the poet, who also helps him in his budding romance with the village belle. Interspersed with the story of their romance is that of a right-wing politician who is trying to win over the villagers from their affinity for the communists.

The postman gets married and Neruda is his best man. Soon, exile over, Neruda has to go back to his hometown and a year passes by. There is a demonstration and the postman is killed in the firing on the communists. Some years later, Neruda visits the village hoping to meet his old friends, but the postman is no more. He has to make do with meeting his wife and child.

The film ends with Neruda walking on the shore of the beach, remembering the days he spent with his friend and a poem of his flashes on the screen. The poem is about How Poetry came to him...It could be written by the postman himself...



SOME COMMENTS

Somewhere deep the postman touches you with his poetry and idealistic ambitions. Still I can't forgive the director for killing off the postman at the end. Or is it that poetry can never be born without a death happening inside you at the very least.

Pablo Neruda's poem appearing at the end of the story makes you feel that like in Borges' story, where the writer meets himself from a time in the future - his future self, here too, the postman was Neruda too, and the older self came to him to waken him to poetry.... Well. it must be good to have your future self come in and tell you to buck up or else you will miss the nobel prize!

Well that was a happy way to see the death of the postman, but the line on the video cover still beats me - it says "Romantic Comedy" ... WTH????