A State of Grace

‘Four Roads’, by the Italian director Alice Rohrwacher, was filmed as an experiment during the first pandemic lockdown, using out-of-date stock and an old 16mm camera. It was a way, she said, of getting close to her neighbours through the camera’s ‘magic eye’. Although there is little evidence of the lockdown, you sense it in the background; encounters are tentative, a little distant, as friends might wave to each other from far away. The film itself is short, simple and unaffected, its textures casual but endearing. Rohrwacher pays close attention to nature as well as to people - trees, grass, meandering paths, gaps in the clouds, with their sudden illumination - and the effect is that of a distillation of deep feelings and perceptions, like a haiku or a lyrical song. On its own modest terms, ‘Four Roads’ is almost perfect.

With voice-over commentary reminiscent of the films of Agnès Varda, Rohrwacher introduces us to her neighbours. An older woman lives alone with her dog and smiles at the camera awkwardly; a solitary man who ‘could be a poet’ beams warmly, shows us a small bouquet of flowers that he has picked in his secret garden; children play in the fields and blow at dandelions. Inside their homes, the camera often pauses at windows and doors, as if to remind us of the occupants’ isolation and apartness, but distance, ‘Four Roads’ emphasises, is not incompatible with respect and affection: the camera is never intrusive, and Rohrwacher talks about how much she appreciates and learns from the presence of her neighbours. Not long after it was shot, the old film was put away and forgotten until a year or so later, when she remembered it while working on something else and ’was surprised to see that during that walk in the area surrounding my house, there was a story hiding behind it’. The story, perhaps, is less of a narrative than an attitude or way of being, a celebration of generosity and grace.

The protagonists in Rohrwacher’s three earlier feature-length films, ‘Corpo Celeste’, ‘The Wonders’, and ‘Happy as Lazzaro’, struggle with the challenge of living with openness and innocence in a world that does not greatly value those qualities. Closest in tone to ‘Four Roads’ is the latter, made in 2019 and, like Rohrwacher’s other films, beautifully photographed by Hélène Louvart. At first, ’Happy as Lazzaro’ seems to echo the social realism of movies such as Ermanno Olmi’s classic ‘The Tree of Wooden Clogs’, but it later turns into something more fanciful, occasionally reminiscent of Fellini or Pasolini. It can be read as a political parable, a folk tale, an absurdist fantasy - or as a combination of all three.

In contrast to the simplicity of ‘Four Roads’, ‘Happy as Lazzaro’ is complex. The opening segment, based on a true story, tells of exploitative neo-feudalism in rural Italy, and it is followed by a tale of resurrection, as suggested by the name of the leading character. The second part is set in the city, and the narrative gradually reveals that life in the imaginary village of ‘Inviolata’, despite its Edenic name, was neither better nor worse than urban freedom; it was just different. What matters most, the film suggests, are the values we live by. While not happier in the country than in town, the contadini were comparatively content; contemporary urban life, however, more ruthless and uncaring than rural feudalism, has destroyed the spirits of all of them, with the exception of Lazzaro. Through humility and innocence, he transcends both servitude and unkindness.

Often to be found staring into the void, and always willing to do what is asked of him, his family and companions think of Lazzaro as amiable but stupid. Ironically, as Rohrwacher has pointed out in interviews, the word ’stupid’ derives from the Latin verb ‘stupere’, which means ‘be amazed or stunned’, a state of mind that is not far from ecstasy. ‘Happy as Lazzaro’, she has explained, is the story of someone who doesn’t pursue his own happiness but that of others, going on to add that we perhaps experience Lazzaro’s innocence as both painful and pleasant because it is a condition of being from which we have long been separated, but with which we deeply identify.

Lazzaro is an embodiment of the archetype of the ‘Holy Fool’; he doesn’t know the difference between good and evil because from his perspective everything is potentially good. Others might include Prince Myshkin in Dostoevsky’s The Idiot, the title character in Voltaire’s Candide, and ‘Gilles’, the pierrot in Watteau’s celebrated painting, on which the original poster for the film was based, as well as St.Francis and many other religious figures. Holy Fools carry little weight in the world, and Rohrwacher has said that ‘Happy as Lazzaro’ reflects a search for ‘lightness’ as a way of living; it may not be coincidental that the Italian writer Italo Calvino, another teller of old and post-modern fables, chose that very quality as the first of five indispensable values in his Six Memos for the Next Millennium.

For further exploration:

‘Four Roads’: https://vimeo.com/578482380. It is also currently available on MUBI.

Alice Rohrwacher on ‘Four Roads’: https://www.90minfilmfest.com/episodes/alice-rohrwacher-on-four-roads-bonus

‘Happy as Lazzaro’ trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3gS7BDmZlw

Alice Rohrwacher on ‘Happy as Lazzaro’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTefLKHkZtY

Italo Calvino’s ‘Six Memos for the Next Millenium’ pdf: https://designopendata.wordpress.com/portfolio/six-memos-for-the-next-millennium-1988-italo-calvino/

On the Margins

Gef