4 dicembre 2014
Tomorrow, Thursday, Dec. 4, 2014, all students in classes V Computer Science and Tourism at the S. Freud Junior High School will attend a viewing of the film about World War I, “Torneranno i prati” directed by Ermanno Olmi.
The screening will be at the Apollo Cinema located in Galleria de Cristoforis, 3 in Milan.
The plot
At a high-altitude outpost near the end of World War I, a group of soldiers fight a few meters away from the Austrian trenches, “so close you seem to hear their breath.” Around, only snow and silence. Inside, cold, fear, fatigue, resignation. And the senseless orders coming from some distant desk in the heat.
will the meadows come back, written all in tiny letters as befits a minimal, moral story, is not an action film and does not even have a plot in the canonical sense of the term, because the few events are consumed like the wax of a candle, inside a dirty, dispirited everyday life. Olmi's film is a ballad as melancholy as the accordion melody that opens the narrative, and as sad as Il silenzio, whose notes are incorporated into the final theme composed and played on trumpet by Paolo Fresu.
Torneranno i prati is an epidermic film, making us hear the roar of mortars in the distance, the gnawing of the drill digging an enemy tunnel under the trench, the frost and monotony of days marked by chow and mail delivery, the only occasion when soldiers' names are spoken, recognizing them as human beings instead of mere numbers. The soldiers, from captain to recruit, stand stunned at the horror of the deception they have fallen into for believing in the love of country and the duty of the Italian citizen. Some look up at us and recount that horror and loneliness, reminding us of the masterful on-camera glances in The Profession of Arms. These simple soldiers are also witnesses to history, a history that was consumed on their skin, and without their knowledge.
