Jardinage et cinéma : art du temps (Labarthes)

André S. Labarthe : "Le temps est venu de faire l'éloge de la lenteur. On ne peut pas voir pousser au présent. La fiction c'est ce qu'on fait arriver aux choses pour qu'elles existent. Il y a un statut Super 8. Le jardinage et le cinéma sont des arts du temps. Nous pouvons utiliser le même vocabulaire. [..]
L'après-midi je découvre quelques films de Peter Hutton. C'est quelqu'un qui a vécu ses images. Où il a vécu, il a fait des films, des portraits de villes et des portraits du temps. Il y a un vrai travail sur la peinture et la lumière. Sa principale référence cinématographique était Gaston Méliès. Peter Hutton a dit: mon université était un baleinier. C'est GENIAL, j'ai l'impression de sortir à travers ces images et ce cinéma. Il y a une recherche du cardre dans le cadre. Dans la profondeur il y a un constat du temps météorologique d'ordre mystique. Passage du noir et blanc à la couleur à travers ses films et son histoire de vie. Il a dit aussi; Je ne force rien aux choses que je filme. En même temps ce sont des images de lutte écologique."
in Carnet de Lussas, 2009?

Le quattro volte (critiques françaises)

Qu'apprend-on de la critique française? Le film est sorti sur plus d'écrans qu'aux Etats-Unis (difficile de faire moins que 1!) et la presse française s'inquiète davantage de sa distribution précaire (on peut encore le voir sur 2 écrans en province, 5 mois après sa sortie!) et n'hésite pas à le faire remarquer dans les articles concernant le film. On voit nettement la différence ici avec la presse américaine engloutie par le système.

Il y a moins de synopsis qui résume pour le lecteur tout ce qui se passe dans le film, et un peu plus d'analyse formelle, ils parlent de films, de cinéma, de poésie, d'art cinématographique. 

Les critiques français utilisent aussi largement le dossier de presse de Frammartino [PDF], mais ont plus de respect pour le succès du film à Cannes ou un festival régional (Annecy), et pour sa place dans le contexte plus large du cinéma italien.

"Des révélations comme celle-là, il s'en manifeste rarement. Des cinéastes comme celui-ci, il faut les honorer. Ce film, d'une malicieuse simplicité, est stupéfiant de beauté et de gravité. [..]
Majesté du silence, musique des grelots. Bêlements, bruits de sabots. [..]
Aucune prise de tête dans Le Quattro Volte, rien que de la poésie secrète, une captivante exploration de coutumes et des temps qui scandent vie, mort, et renaissance. Une éblouissante limpidité narrative. [..]
Grand Prix indiscutable du dernier festival de cinéma italien d'Annecy, Le Quattro Volte témoigne d'une curiosité contemplative pour les mystères et d'une réticence viscérale pour les artifices. [..]
Ici, le réalisme extrême de cette fiction aux apparences de documentaire réinvente la mécanique des catastrophes en chaîne et l'art du cadavre exquis."
"Le Quattro Volte" : de l'humain au minéral, l'enchantement du monde; Jean Luc Douin, Le Monde, 28 Dec 2010

Douin utilise plus d'un tiers de son papier pour raconter le déroulement du film d'un bout à l'autre, mais, au moins, la second moitié est consacrée à une réflexion sur le film, sur son sens symbolique et formel. Il apporte une nouvelle référence cinématographique : L'Arbre aux sabots (1978/Ermanno Olmi), il compare aussi l'humour visuel à Buster Keaton et Jacques Tati. 

Un mot que je retiens particulièrement est cette idée de "cadavres exquis" qui capture bien la méthode de Frammartino. Ce n'est pas la quête vers l'inconscient des Surréalistes, mais l'addition bout à bout d'épisodes, de lieux, d'images sans raccords préparés. Frammartino a filmé dans trois villages distincts, sur plusieurs années, et le montage a ensuite rassemblé ces images distantes dans une histoire apparemment liée par une continuité symbolique arbitraire (celle de la métempsychose) et invisible.

"Disposant d’une distribution aussi frêle qu’un chevreau nouveau-né, Le Quattro Volte de Michelangelo Frammartino risque malheureusement de passer assez inaperçu en cette fin 2010. [..]
Le Quattro Volte capte le fugace et l’éternel à partir d’un localisme très ancré. [..]
Le Quattro Volte avance en philosophant sur l’ordre des choses avec une tranquillité limpide, faisant allègrement tomber les murs du local pour atteindre l’universel. [..] Dans la continuité, la séquence devient une méditation éblouissante, une précieuse miniature. [..]
Ce formidable plan burlesque se gonfle de déflagrations comiques inattendues baignant dans une bande-son très sophistiquée, tout en répétant, à la manière d’un motif, d’amples panoramiques. Ces derniers deviennent nécessaires tant la multitude de récits ayant trouvé leur origine dans le champ se poursuivent en dehors de lui. La caméra semble perdre la tête et nous faire éprouver la difficulté de contenir un tout dans un seul plan. En l’occurrence la transformation d’une réalité prosaïque en une situation extrêmement complexe et inextricable, où tout se trouve lié par un réseau touffu de causes et de conséquences. [..]
Film sur la circulation entre les quatre états, chaque plan grossit et finit par accoucher du suivant. Dans ces conditions, le raccord transmet, dynamise et transforme le plan précédent en autre chose. Le plan serait le temps de la gestation et le montage celui de la nativité. [..]"

Le Quattro Volte; Arnaud Hée (Critikat, 28 décembre 2010)

Hée, critique consciencieux, parle du cinéma italien dans son contexte et de sa frêle distribution. 

Il se réfère à Oncle Boonmee (2010/Weerasethakul) et à  I Dimenticati / Les Oubliés (1959/Vittorio de Seta), et il tente une analyse formelle du style. Malgré les belles choses qu'il écrit (voir citation ci-dessus), il choisi de mettre en exergue une "situation extrêmement complexe et inextricable" alors que le sujet est la simplicité naturelle, une "expertise du montage" alors que la succession épurée des plans n'attire pas l'attention, une "bande-son très sophistiquée" qui n'est qu'un banal bruitage en post-production sans effets Bressonien, et selon lui le film est "extrêmement joueuse et drôle"... ce qui ne m'a pas marqué à prime abord. N'abusons pas des "extrêmes" quand le ton se veut simple et plutôt neutre. Ce n'est pas une touche d'humour discrète qui transforme un film calme en un spectacle extrême...

"Il faut se réjouir de l’existence, rare, de films comme celui de Michelangelo Frammartino, cinéaste que nous avions découvert en 2006 avec son premier film, déjà étonnant, déjà tourné dans la même région et avec le même manque de moyens et le même sens de l’espace, Il Dono. [..]  Frammartino (jeune homme cultivé, professeur de cinéma milanais issu d’une famille de paysans calabrais) fait un cinéma antérieur à l’invention du cinéma, ou plutôt qui ignorerait la narration cinématographique, qui repose souvent paresseusement sur le conflit. [..]"
Le Quattro Volte de Michelangelo Frammartino;  Jean-Baptiste Morain (Les Inrockuptibles, 28 décembre 2010) 

J'aime sa façon de résumé le film pour le lecteur, Morain égraine une série d'images saisies au hasard de quelques scènes, sans pour autant révéler leur rapport causal, leur position dans la continuité, leur rôle dans le film, juste des flashs poétiques isolés. Et c'est la meilleure façon de donner envie de voir un film sans trop en dire. Il s'émeut aussi du succès du film, de sa place dans le contexte italien... cependant il s'imagine aussi que ce film "ne ressemble à aucun autre" et a "humour visuel et sonore d’une grande sophistication". Il préfère replacer le thème de la réincarnation sur un plan symbolique, donc une réflexion moins mystique et plus métaphysique sur l'ordre du monde. 

"Frammartino constate la dissolution de ce monde. S'il ne nomme jamais Alessandria del Carretto, c'est que chez lui la démarche documentaire a inversé ses fins. Chez lui, la métaphysique, l'intemporel, sont au premier plan. Il s'agit alors, pour son cinéma à lui, de retrouver l'apparence, le temporaire, l'existant qui se cache derrière l'essence métaphysique des images. [..] Ce qui fait le prix de ce film est aussi sa limite. La dimension choisie est conceptuelle. [..]  Si l’on perçoit vite le carcan qui enferme ici l'émotion, Le Quattro Volte offre néanmoins une réflexion sur l'oeuvre de De Seta et sur le monde filmé par celui-ci."

Francesco Boille (Independencia, 13 janvier 2011)

Boille écrit une critique du court métrage de Vittorio de Seta :  I Dimenticati / Les Oubliés (1959), plus qu'il ne décrit le film de Frammartino. Toutefois le parallèle est intéressant (même si je n'ai pas vu cet autre film italien) qui compare les méthodes et intentions de chaque réalisateur séparés par un demi-siècle. Il axe son commentaire sur une formalisation conceptuelle du film, découlant d'une illustration panthéiste, un angle que j'ai choisi de laisser de côté pour ma part, pour son utilisation anecdotique, et dont Frammartino lui-même relativise l'importance (voir l'interview ici).

"Gigantesque pour les promesses dont il est porteur. Minuscule parce que, dans son pays, il est un des seuls à les porter. [..]
De prime abord, Le quattro volte fait craindre le style très académique d'une modernité taiseuse, au récit volontairement âpre et pauvre, qui se contente de buter sur des extériorités et n'y trouve rien que l'absurdité du monde, son chaos permanent. Très vite, on s'aperçoit qu'il n'en est rien. Le quattro volte se révèle un film 'plein', chargé de récits, de microfictions virales qui, sous couvert d'observation, envahissent le plan à mesure qu'il se déroule, l'air de rien, sous nos yeux. [..] La succession des événements, d'abord frappants, d'abord anodins, d'abord séparés, nous révèle leurs liaidons profondes et leur importance dans le cycle décrit. [..] Le moteur de ce cinéma c'est bien évidemment la durée. [..]
Ce cinéma se fonde sur cette belle idée que l'image, prise dans une durée et laissée à cette durée, sans rhétorique (montage, dialogue, fondus, ellipses, etc. : tout ce qu'on appelle l' "expression"), accouche de sa propre dramaturgie, d'une dramaturgie presque naturelle. [..] Le quattro volte est aussi un film d'action. Ou disons plutôt : un film d'actions. [..] Frammartino ne fétichise pas pour autant le son direct. [..]
Tout est tissage, tissage de fils disparates qui donne, vue de haut, une image d'ensemble. [..] Ce neoprimitivisme abreuve le cinéma de nouvelles ressources. Comme par exemple cette idée de mettre un animal au centre du film, san rien abandonner au vococentrisme et à l'anthropomorphisme courants du cinéma, san rien lâcher non plus sur le désir de récit."

La chèvre et le chou; Mathieu Macheret (Trafic, n°77, printemps 2011)

Macheret écrit un long article, sans oublier de préciser le caractère exceptionnel de ce mode narratif aussi bien que son positionnement fébrile sur le marché italien ou même français (alors qu'il est sorti en France sur plus d'écrans qu'aux USA par exemple - un seul écran sur un parc de près de 40000 écrans nationaux! Les critiques français s'inquiètent, les critiques américains s'en foutent...).

Il propose un parallèle avec Oncle Boonmee de Weerasethakul (animisme, métempsychose) ou Farrebique de Rouquier (rapport du paysan à la nature).

Contrairement à ce que j'expliquais plus tôt (Quattro volte (critique contemplative) 5), Macheret s'imagine que le son direct n'est pas essentiel, il va plus loin, il affirme que la bande-son artificielle, composée en post-production, est "une unique partition" qui réalise "une focalisation d'ensemble"... Je m'étonne d'entendre que l'artificialité est ce qui donne le naturel au tout. Il conçoit ce film non comme une immersion proche du documentaire mais comme un collage fabriqué de toute pièce. Il insiste d'une part, sur l'absence de rhétorique au niveau visuel, sur le témoignage d'une "cause immanente du monde", mais ne se formalise pas quant à la rhétorique sonore imposé par une bande-son mixée... 

Lire aussi:

• Le quattro volte (English critics)
• Quattro volte (critique contemplative) 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5
• Frammartino interview 

Dan Kois Syndrome (Proud Boredom)

While a few texting-dependent hipsters believe rushed blurbs should be elevated to serious criticism...  the NYT finally decides to make a contribution to last year's "boring" controversy initiated by Sight and Sound (Feb 2010) and Film Comment (Mar 2010). Or is it just a response to something that was published in their very own newspaper (self-alimented fire), one month earlier (1st May 2011), by Dan Kois? When the New York Times is arguing with itself about whether vegetables are healthy or not, you know American culture has serious issues. In any case, we can't say that the print media is on top of the new media reactivity of the XXIst century... 

Dan Kois: "As a viewer whose default mode of interaction with images has consisted, for as long as I can remember, of intense, rapid-fire decoding of text, subtext, metatext and hypertext, I’ve long had a queasy fascination with slow-moving, meditative drama. Those are the kinds of films dearly loved by the writers, thinkers and friends I most respect, so I, too, seek them out; I usually doze lightly through them; and I often feel moved, if sleepy, afterward. But am I actually moved? Or am I responding to the rhythms of emotionally affecting cinema? Am I laughing because I get the jokes or because I know what jokes sound like? [..] As I get older, I find I'm suffering from a kind of culture fatigue and have less interest in eating my cultural vegetables, no matter how good they may be for me... Yes, there are films, like the 2000 Taiwanese drama 'Yi Yi,' that enrapture me with deliberate pacing, spare screenplays and static shooting styles... but while I'm grateful to have watched 'Solaris' and 'Blue' and 'Meek's Cutoff' and 'The Son' and 'Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner)' and 'Three Times' and on and on, my taste stubbornly remains my taste."

Apparently this guy didn't read the press last year. What is symptomatic of a very American mentality that tends to take over general culture with the prevalence of subjectivity and the pride of being uneducated, is how he uses his 6 years old daughter anecdote as a springboard. Could it be any more ironic??? I'm not sure he's fully aware of confessing at once to his ineptitude as a cultural critic and demonstrating right there that infantilisation is the rampant evil of American journalism. 

Candidly he equates childhood behaviours (play-pretend to be 1 year older) with subjective punditry (play-pretend to be intellectuals who understand art). Some are just anti-intellectual and make a living of trashing higher-education, art and critical thinking. At least they are being honest with themselves. But others kind of feel guilty and want the prestige of being educated cutural arbiters without the effort of actually getting an education and mastering the objective critical distance (See the Root of anti-intellectualism). Thus they prefer to demolish the educated establishment with its critical standards and claim that absence of values and self-indulgent pleasure is the new establishment.

Becoming an adult implies overcoming this irrational aversion for healthy food. Only immature children would complain about having to eat vegetables. Richard Brody rightly identifies this as a dictatorship of the "Pleasure Principle":

Richard Brody: "A food critic who doesn’t want to eat vegetables would be laughed out of the business—unless he planned to carve out a niche comparing fast-food outlets or criss-crossing the country in search of the ultimate corn dog. [..] It is the age of the specialist; if Kois has, with this piece, put himself out of the running for serious consideration as a general movie critic, he may be preparing to hang out a shingle as a meat-and-potatoes critic—if there’s a comparable cinematic category."

Dan Kois is too puerile to balance his Pleasure Principle with the Reality Principle (see Freud) to defer instant gratification. His narcissistic brains is only able to conceive the concept of "good" as something confirmed by instant pleasure, like "entertaining spectacle". He recognizes that better critics than him recommend these vegetables that are good for him, but he can't get over the fact they are nasty-tasting medicine yielding no visible gratifying results. As a rebellious adulescent who refuses to grow up and embrace a healthy lifestyle, he feels like it's the right thing to declare that, maybe, all things considered, we should be more sceptical about the nutritional vertues of vegetables, maybe we should start to re-evaluate dietetics and trust our guts and taste buds more.
In an interview Dan Kois even claims that a film critic is "not meant to be objective, a critic is meant to be as subjective as possible"! If you are as subjective as anyone else, you don't deserve the right to speak as a "cultural arbiter", which is a title you earn by proving you can supersede your own navel-gazing idiosyncratic taste, in order to deliver a discourse that other people (who are not you) may relate to, for its sharable objectivity and its open-minded tolerance. Objectivity is PRECISELY what distinguishes critics from the "common people"!!! Unfortunately most Americans believe that critics (like their political representatives) should be as dumb as everyone else, not more educated, not more knowledgeable, not more perspicacious, not more competent, not more pedagogical. When you don't respect your intelligentsia, you get the level of cultural discourse you deserve...
Send your ironic thank you notes to Pauline Kael for discrediting intellectual education in your country. Culture, OK, but not more than I can take! Educators, OK, but not smarter than me! Wait till the students hear about that and the schools will be on strike for being forced to learn more than their lazy asses would like...

How could this article be greenlit by editors of The freaking New York Times??? Pandering to the lowest instincts of the masses (anti-intellectual, anti-education, anti-culture, anti-journalism, subjective conservatism) is one thing (you gotta do what you gotta do to bait in the advertisers, right?), but passing it as "professional cultural criticism" is demented and irresponsible. I don't think that readers who make the effort to read an intellectual newspaper such as the NYT, need their self-indulgent cultural apathy to be flattered and reinforced. That's a job for the populist press. They must really be desperate for wider readership to expand their tribune to the lowest common denominator type of demagoguery.

Here is what I wrote last year, which is demonstrated again now with Dan Kois, his followers and his detractors:

HarryTuttle: "This Film Press drama is so entertaining! These typical controversies are the ones that split the tiny little world of film criticism between the thinkers and the followers. It's the perfect bait to lure the fake-cinephiles to reveal their true colour : only liking "slow Modern cinema" when it's fashionable and turning around when "slow cinema" loses public support from the high-brow magazines.
We can see the comments aggregating after these sententious stances : the low-brow viewers who jump in the polemic to blame film criticism as a whole for preferring depth to fun; and the high-brow viewers who take this opportunity to slam the lax commercial attitude of the cinephile magazines, which tend to support the mainstream fare over anything really subversive. This front-line is all too familiar and predictable. Not to mention all the clueless readers who recount their experience with movies that are not artfilms, nor slow or contemplative! Can't you see this is the timeless clash between the subjective mass and the elite critic? Of course it is anti-intellectual to stereotype the art-cinema scene after a superficial formal aspect related to speed!"

Another symptomatic revelation of this article is that there is this alienating area of cinema that is said to be "great", but that only an elite may "get". A reviewer no longer judges films for their achievements, from bad to good. There is this new anti-intellectual category : "good BUT too challenging for my little lazy self". Either you aspire to higher culture, and take it upon yourself to educate yourself and work your way up to enlightenment, or you refuse to make the effort and you just stay away from any cultural criticism! 

Nobody "has to" watch "intellectual" films (Solaris, Blue, Yi Yi, Tulpan, Meek's Cutoff, Le Fils, Atanarjuat, Three Times...) or "has to" read intellectual literature (James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Marcel Proust, Jean Paul Sartre, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Leo Tolstoy...), you do IF you want to educate yourself as a spectator/reader. Though, if what you seek is to gain the authority of a "cultural arbiter" (critic/historian/academic), then OBVIOUSLY, you pretty much MUST have had seen most of the canonical work established by recognized cultural arbiters before you. So no need to whine about having to do your homework before being able to publish authoritative statements as a cultural arbiter. The best way for you to avoid watching boring intellectual films is to find another job.
If all you care about in life is to have an entertaining night-out at the movies... you don't need to worry about watching challenging films that make you think rather than generate adrenaline. Just don't discourage others by exposing so indecently and so irresponsibly your own selfish apathy. You're not a cultural critic, you're a self-indulgent infant who cannot transcend the futile guilt of "having to" eat vegetables. Keep aspiring until you earn authority in this domain.

Here is my tip: if you don't find genuine PLEASURE in exploring challenging intellectual culture, you're not ready to judge and write about intellectual culture. Reviewing art is not as immediate and obvious as reviewing fast food menus or roller-coaster rides!

Manhola Dargis: "“Of course, what I think is boring,” Warhol wrote in his memoir “Popism,” “must not be the same as what other people think is, since I could never stand to watch all the most popular action shows on TV, because they’re essentially the same plots and the same shots and the same cuts over and over again. Apparently, most people love watching the same basic thing, as long as the details are different.”
Warhol’s own films are almost always called boring, usually by people who have never seen or sampled one, including minimalist epics like “Empire,” eight hours of the Empire State Building that subverts the definition of what a film is (entertaining, for one). Long movies — among my favorites is Béla Tarr’s seven-hour “Sátántangó” — take time away even as they restore a sense of duration, of time and life passing, that most movies try to obscure through continuity editing. Faced with duration not distraction, your mind may wander, but there’s no need for panic: it will come back. In wandering there can be revelation as you meditate, trance out, bliss out, luxuriate in your thoughts, think.
Thinking is boring, of course (all that silence), which is why so many industrially made movies work so hard to entertain you. If you’re entertained, or so the logic seems to be, you won’t have the time and head space to think about how crummy, inane and familiar the movie looks, and how badly written, shoddily directed and indifferently acted it is. "

She even mentions Akerman's Jeanne Dielman just to confirm that with Dan Kois examples of other "boring art films", this rampant anti-intellectual American mentality (amongst the reviewers intelligentsia!) is definitely frustrated by and defiant of "non-speedy cinema". As if "slowish films" were the only type of intellectual art films. But they just call them "slow" because, on the surface, they really are nothing like current Hollywood, and that's all they care to compare them to. As if this outdated cliché that "European cinema is slow and boring" had never been debunked in the 60ies with the acclaimed superiority of Antonioni, Bergman, Bresson... Film culture already went through this anti-intellectual argument. Are you re-evaluating what was considered great art in the 60ies? Ennui, slowness, scarcity of dialogue, absence of excitation and denouement are, educated critics learnt it, not evidences, in and of themselves, of failure to communicate with an audience. Damn, the audiences in the 60ies were a little more adventurous and curious than today!

A.O. Scott: "MOVIES may be the only art form whose core audience is widely believed to be actively hostile to ambition, difficulty or anything that seems to demand too much work on their part. In other words, there is, at every level of the culture — among studio executives, entertainment reporters, fans and quite a few critics — a lingering bias against the notion that movies should aspire to the highest levels of artistic accomplishment. [..]  But lately, I think, protests against the deep-dish and the highbrow — to use old-fashioned populist epithets of a kind you used to hear a lot in movies themselves — mask another agenda, which is a defense of the corporate status quo. For some reason it needs to be asserted, over and over again, that the primary purpose of movies is to provide entertainment, that the reason everyone goes to the movies is to have fun. Any suggestion to the contrary, and any film that dares, however modestly, to depart from the orthodoxies of escapist ideology, is met with dismissal and ridicule. [..] Why is it, though, that “serious” is a bad word in cultural conversations, or at least in discussions of film? Why is thinking about a movie an activity to be avoided, and a movie that seems to require thinking a source of suspicion?"

Don't worry, he's only talking about American audience. The rest of the world is not yet totally plagued by anti-intellectualism. And France is definitely not, I can testify. We still have art-friendly filmmakers, producers, distributors, press and audience. But it's nice to see such things published in the NYT for once. I hope the intellectuals won't be afraid/ashamed to speak up against self-indulgent consumerism in the future, anytime it is necessary.

Source :

Eating Your Cultural Vegetables (Dan Kois; NYT; 1st May 2011)
The Pleasure Principle (Richard Brody; The New Yorker; 3rd May 2011)
In Defense of the Slow and the Boring (Manohla Dargis, A.O. Scott; NYT; 3rd June 2011)

Related:

• Dan Kois syndrome 2-3
• Slow Film, Easy Life (Sight&Sound) / "Boring" is not a critical argument / Wasted time (Romney) / Boredom (Charney) 
• Re-dramatization of the un-dramatic / Voluntary Engineered Apathy / Contra-contrarianism (IFFR) 4 

Mogari no mori (Kawase)

La forêt de Mogari / Mogari no mori (2007/Kawaze Naomi/Japon) 1h33' VOST français [OFFLINE trop tard]

Grand Prix du jury, Cannes 2007

* * *

Naomi Kawase: "Dans tous les aspects du travail, on donne la primauté à la rapidité. Mais nos ancêtres, avec cette faculté à attendre, n’avaient-ils pas au bout du compte un meilleur sens des priorités que nous aujourd’hui ?"

Hanezu no tsuki (2011/Kawase/Japan) Compétition officielle, Cannes 2011

• Entretien avec Kawase Naomi, 18 mai 2011 (Cannes) 14'37"
• Conférence de presse, 18 mai 2011 (Cannes) 45'20"

Le quattro volte (English critics)

So what do we learn from an anglophone review of Frammartino's Le quattro volte?
Acquarello plays out cosmic inter-connectedness, Davies gives a plot run down, Pipolo spotlights the ants, Scott wants to emphasize "complexity", Hoberman finds it wiggy, and Bordwell believes there is suspense.
The attention to form is lacking or clearly mistaken, confusing minimalism with classic dramatic devices and rhetoric. In this case, Frammartino's long and rich press-kit [PDF] certainly helped these guys to features some interesting pre-packaged ideas, otherwise it would have been as bland and empty as their reviews of Alamar... And these are the positive reviews admiring the film.
And the film only came out on one screen (Film Forum, not even a regular commercial theatre) in NYC... and nobody even cared to mention this outrageous injustice! What are critics good for nowadays?
Michelangelo Frammartino's name is as long as Apichatpong Weerasethakul, yet these critics never once feel compelled to use an alternate shorter nickname, like "Joe", to save space or for the "sake of variety"... (see Random factoid 2: Apichatpong)

• Le Quattro volte, 2010 (acquarello, 16 Oct 2010)

"Frammartino gives equal weight between the organic and inorganic to convey a sense of cosmic, eternal interconnectedness"

Acquarello's micro-synopsis doesn't reveal all the plotpoints, and references Depardon and Iosseliani, but unfortunately plays along with the obvious metempsychosis theme.

• Le Quattro Volte / Michelangelo Frammartino (Jon Davies, cinemascope, #45, Dec 2010) [PDF]

"Our perspective shifts tremendously: where once we observed the goats from the herder's point of view, viewing them as little more than a seething, collective entity, our eyes are now trained on them as individuals, as we follow not only the small woolly white body inhabited by our protagonist-soul but also its companions. [..] Primal to the extreme, Le Quattro Volte re-orients narrative cinema's ur-focus on the human subject and concerns itself with the lives of animals, vegetables, minerals, and, finally, smoke, as much as it does with the affairs of human beings [..] The unsubtitled human dialogue is treated identically to birdsong, goat bleats, dog barks, the swaying of tree branches or the crackle [..] of the coal, as one layer of the sound among many."

Even if Jon Davies sticks to the press-kit talking points of animism and metempsychosis, this review is the most interesting of the bunch. He seems to be transcribing the script at times, noting every events in chronological order... but in the quote above, there is an attempt to touch the essence of the film and how its peculiar form influences our reading of the film. What most reviewers never mention is the shift of point of view of the film with each episode (aside from the change of "protagonist" through transmigration of the soul). Not only it affects the course of the storyline, but most importantly the nature of the camera gaze.

• Moments of 2010 (Geoff Andrew, Moving Image Source, 1st Jan 2011)

"[..] the single moment that brought me the greatest satisfaction was the long shot (long in both senses of the word) in Michelangelo Frammartino's Le Quattro Volte—a minor miracle of mise-en-scène involving a large cast of non-professional villagers, a truck, a pebble, and a small yappy dog who really deserves an Oscar. This quietly virtuoso sequence, building on the distinctively laconic, fragmented yet fluid storytelling style of Frammartino's debut Il dono, shows that one may mix fiction and "reality," do something unusually experimental and philosophical, and still make it funny and exciting. Let's hope it reaches audiences!"

Thanks for the attention brought on its underexposition. What's disappointing is that he remembers from this film the "virtuoso" plan-sequence, because critics are only attracted to superlatives. "funny" and "exciting" are not what best describe the mood of this humble film, in my mind.

• Pythagorean Theorem (Tony Pipolo; Artforum, 28 March 2011)

"Serenely composed and paced as befits the subject it delineates, it seduces us with its gentle, assured manner, laced with charity and humor. [..]  They range from Tati-like tableaux of the human condition that only seem blissfully unorchestrated, to bird’s-eye views that recall the kind of landscape painting—e.g., of Bosch, or Poussin—that encompasses myriad narrative details." 

He also appropriates the press-kit talking points, but at least with enough critical distance to question them. References to Gertrude Stein, Siegfried Kracauer, Tati, Bosch or Poussin complement a standard review with a dose of art culture, unlike the other critics. And the last paragraph on the motif of ants is particularly interesting. I'm not sure ants are the key symbol that explains the film, but it was a pertinent angle to explore, to give substance to a review.

• Eternal Complexities of the Very Simple Life (A. O. Scott; NYT, 29 March 2011)

"“Le Quattro Volte,” an idiosyncratic and amazing new film by Michelangelo Frammartino, is so full of surprises — nearly every shot contains a revelation, sneaky or overt, cosmic or mundane — that even to describe it is to risk giving something away. At the same time, the nervous reviewer’s convention of posting “spoiler alerts” has rarely seemed so irrelevant. [..] You have never seen anything like this movie"

Scott thinks the film is built on the revelation of "surprises" (see Bordwell's section below)! This film could only appear "idiosyncratic" to the Hollywood-fed crowd, not to the familiars of CCC (Alonso's La Libertad/Los Muertos/Liverpool, Kaplanoglu's Honey, Abdykalykov's The Adopted Son, Epstein's Finis Terrae, Flaherty's Nanook/Man of Aran, Pálfi's Hukkle, Michel's Les Hommes, Peleshian's The Seasons, Depardon's Profil Paysans...)

Apologetic rhetoric : he tries to sell a spartan film as something somehow entertaining. "full of surprises", "revelation", "but there is nothing grim or dispiriting about this film", "packs more life into 88 minutes than movies twice as long", "epic scope", "And yet, perhaps paradoxically, that sense of antiquity gives the film its almost jarring freshness, its uncanny sense of discovery", "extraordinary formal sophistication", "hilarious", "The operations of cause and effect are as airtight as the outcome is absurd, as if the laws of the universe were rigged for comic effect", " completely accessible", " shocking". 

You don't need to exaggerate the effects of a film that tries its best to minimize effects and stay very simple...

"Each being or thing is examined with such care and wit that you become engrossed in the moment-to-moment flow of cinematic prose, only at the end grasping the epic scope and lyrical depth of what you have seen, which is more or less all of creation."

At least, he's not going against the grain of the film itself. If he talks about it with a very conventional discourse formated for mainstream movies and mainstream audience... he doesn't oppose the film's austerity (which is too often the case). But not enough original ideas to make it a pertinent review of the film.

• Celebrating the Cycle of Life in Le Quattro Volte (J. Hoberman; Village Voice, 30 Mar 2011)

"one of the wiggiest nature documentaries—or almost-documentaries—ever made. [..]  His minimalism is highly orchestrated. [..] I can see how, given its highfalutin premise, exquisitely shot recurring locations, and irresistible animal behavior, Le Quattro Volte could induce a nagging sense of calculated ethno-funk, but this skeptic found it pretty darn sublime."

Really? What's so crazy about it? (see AO Scott section above). Frammartino gives you a very simple and discreet, naturalistic and minimalistic, evident and straight forward film and all you can think about is "wiggiest"? Your sense of rationality has been totally fucked up by Hollywood dude. Even the metempsychosis (implicit and not assertive) is hardly anything out of the ordinary when the subject of the film is precisely the antiquated, millenium old folklore of superstition and animism pervading rural Europe traditions.
How is it "orchestrated" or "calculated"? The only order is the macro structure in 4 chapters which are not even signaled. The shots themselves, at the micro level, don't feel especially constructed. Except maybe the Easter procession, because of the camerawork, but it's far from the smooth blocking of a Brian De Palma plan-sequence where everything falls in place at every second. Orchestrated and calculated aren't the words that best describe Frammartino's intentions. Why would you want to over-complicate, over-hype something that tries to stay very simple? I guess nuance is not your style.
Other than that, he happily repeats the talking point from the press release, and recounts almost the entire succession of events in the film, without adding any critical value himself... If you didn't want to watch the film, there you have it, Hoberman tells you everything you need to know to be able to pretend having seen it to your friends at the watercooler. I wrote more than 9000 words on it, and didn't give away as much from the shot-by-shot run down than this guy in 600 words. So re-writing a synopsis is all you can do? Is that what your readers expect from "film criticism"?

• No suspense? (David Bordwell, 11 April 2011)

To David Bordwell, this falls in a post about "suspense", as if minimalism was the best example to study infinitesimal traces of traditional dramatic devices... I don't think he would find this a successful treatment of "suspense" in a mainstream movie. After giving us a run down of the entire film, he warns us against spoilers! Spoilers for a plotless film, which plot he already revealed episode by episode.

David Bordwell : "In the rustic spirit of Rouquier’s Farrebique, we get the sheer successiveness of things, the fact that life is one damned, or placid, moment after another. So suspense can be replaced by sheer consecutiveness, but the task then becomes to make things interesting. Frammartino does so through careful framing, evocative sound, and crisp storytelling technique. [..] We should, then, never underestimate the power of suspense, even in those films which might seem to forswear it. Melodrama or pastoral, any genre can find a way to incite and excite us by asking what can come next."

So what suspense is there in this film exactly? No suspense at all in the charcoal making episode, pretty straight forward uneventful linearity. No suspense in the town celebration episode, pretty straight forward uneventful linearity (unless you count the catch of presents atop the tree mast as suspense, or the apprehension of one boy falling off...). By the way, what he calls a "Christmas tree" is in fact a maypole typical of spring days in European pagan folklore (La festa della pita; Alessandria del Carretto, Calabria, Italy, May 3rd, video). 

No suspense in the lost kid episode (unless you thought it was supposed to be a Disney movie happy ending). Is there suspense in wildlife documentaries? This episode ends on a kid falling asleep at the bottom of a tree. Black screen for night. And cut to the tree episode, with a tree going through the winter (without any goat in sight). So if the sleep was a metaphorical death for the kid, the film refuses to explicit the tragic of the helpless abandoned kid, unlike what a suspenseful movie would do.
The only remotely suspenseful episode would be the first one. The shepherd coughs, loses his placebo and the church door is closed... will he get his miracle dust in time for his bed time? Frammartino reveals in plain sight that his medication is pure superstition, so the audience shouldn't expect any hope from this side. He also cuts out the rest of the night, so he doesn't prolongate the onscreen psychosomatic "agony" of the shepherd to keep the audience on their toes. Against all dramatic rules, he leaves behind the "cliff-hanger", and cuts to a long sequence on something completely different, the Easter procession, which effectively defuses any tension built up until then. Without frequently reminding the spectators of the pending fate of the dying shepherd. So what was actually suspenseful about it? Is metempsychosis suspenseful? (see: Re-dramatisation of the undramatic)

Do you really think the film relies on the audience wondering at any and every moment : "what will come next?" Wrong film for this kind of dramatic build up. I'm not saying there is no dramatic tension at all... because Frammartino could have easily given the shepherd a sudden natural death if he wanted to exclude any protracted narration. But it would be difficult to compare how Frammartino constructed his film, by successive accumulation.

As I explained in my article, Le quattro volte could be seen as a didactic deconstruction of dramaturgy, progressively evacuating all dramatic elements from the film, towards pure documentary minimalism and contemplation. So the first episode is the closest to anthropomorphism and human drama, all things considered. But if there are traces of suspense early on, there is none in the rest of the film.



Related:

• Quattro volte (critiques françaises)
• Quattro volte (critique contemplative) 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5
• Frammartino interview