“Work is man’s chance to express himself . . . What I am against is the relationship man has today with the world in which he works.”—Ermanno Olmi
Ermanno Olmi is the Italian director that you come across after you have screened Fellini, Antonioni, De Sica, Visconti and all the other titans that give Italian cinema its weight and resonance. Andre Bazin used to say that what gives Italian film its substance is its sense of “economy mixed with pathos”. I usually tend to agree with Sr. Bazin but in this case I think he may have suffered from not being able to view the works of later Fellini ,Visconti and Pasolini. If there is anything that stamps the work of these late 60’s Italian auteurs it is the opposite of Bazin’s dictum, they are full of pomp, circumstance and aesthetic indulgence. Pasolini would be proud.
Ermanno Olmi, is another matter entirely. To get to the heart of Olmi the artist, one must first understand the nature of work. The movement, cadence, intonation and internal rhythm that governs our daily work lives is critical to his vision. Work is a banal painstaking process that keeps the “miracle at bay”, always unfolding, always inside the heart of the quotidian; and Olmi sucks the marrow out of that daily miracle via the image. His obsessive search to unwrap the mystery behind the circadian wheel of our lives is manic, impressive, borderline psycho religious; Bresson would be proud.
In the Italians, the Catholic and the metaphysical cannot be excised from the nature of the work itself, and in Olmi this continues to be the case. However, the way that Olmi “sacralizes” his characters is not done in the usual mode that would recall Virgil or Dante; it is not medieval religious theatre that attempts to ostentatiously regale its subject. No, “For Olmi,” writes critic Kent Jones, “everybody is a hero.” This is a thoroughly modern idea and is one that Olmi clings to in every frame. Il Posto with its characters that suffer quietly and move through the mundane details of daily life with this strength of purpose are a perfect example of the hero in Olmi’s view. If anything these miniature films that depict the work and activity that seem insignificant are a poignant testament to us; those whose umbilical cords attached to their cubicles yearn for something to express as they keep the miracle at bay.
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