The Postman Skarmeta Summary

The first time we see Mario, the hero of ',' we think perhaps he is retarded. He is having a conversation with his father, who seems to be retarded, too, or perhaps just engrossed in his soup.We realize in the next scene or two that Mario is of normal intelligence, but has been raised in a place that provided him with almost nothing to talk about. That is about to change.Mario lives on a quiet island where little changes and new ideas arrive slowly, if at all. Then one day the postmaster enlists him to bicycle out to the house of a new arrival. Pablo Neruda (played by ), the famous poet, has been exiled from his native Chile for political reasons, and has come here to live.Mario grows fascinated by Neruda, who seems to receive letters mostly from women.

Skarmeta

He discusses the poet with the village postmaster, a communist who supports Neruda for his political ideas.Neither one of them has much insight into poetry, but Mario agrees to take the job of postman so that he can visit Neruda daily, and maybe find out how to pick up girls.Their relationship grows slowly. Neruda is a quiet man who lives with a woman, perhaps his wife. Mario sees enough to realize they are deeply in love. Slowly, using every possible conversational opening, the postman forges a friendship. He obtains a book of Neruda's poems, and asks him to sign it. Neruda signs 'Regards, Pablo Neruda.' Mario is crushed: the book is not even personalized, 'To Mario.'

Dictionary; Book; Downloads; Articles; Essential Questions; Updates; Elsewhere; Il Postino. By KE Monahan Huntley. IL Postino recounts the story of a diffident postman and a world renown poet, set against a backdrop of conflicting political, societal, and spiritual ideologies (objective story domain of psychology; os concern of conceiving).Mario, the main character, is the son of a fisherman.

How can he impress women with it? As the movie opens, Mario is like the man who came to dinner: He arrives at Neruda's gate, and in a sense never seems to leave. By the end of the film, Mario is more like the mute, inglorious Miltons that Thomas Gray wrote about in his 'Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard': We see that Mario, too, might have developed the soul of a poet, had he not been born in such a backwater.And there is another lesson - Neruda can also learn from the people he has come to live among. Some months after he leaves the village, a newspaper clipping comes into Mario's hands, quoting the poet, who says, 'I lived in complete solitude with the most simple people in the world.'

Mario's face betrays just the slightest twitch as he learns how 'simple' he is. That twitch is enough to reveal that he is no longer quite so simple.' The Postman' could have developed its friendship between poet and peasant more obviously. The beauty of the film is in its quietness.

The director, is British, born in India. His previous credits ('1984' and ') are interesting films, but nothing like this Italian-language production.The guiding spirit behind the production seems to have been Troisi, an Italian director and actor who co-wrote the screenplay and postponed heart surgery in order to act in the title role. He died the day after the movie was finished. Perhaps it was his illness, or perhaps it was his sense of the material, that caused him to play the role in such a low key. He never seems to push for an effect, never strains, never goes too far. His character spends the entire film essentially violating Neruda's privacy - but he does it so quietly, you can never quite catch him at it.I also liked Philippe Noiret, as the poet.

Postman

He is a French actor, now 65, who has spent decades playing a phlegmatic man of the people. When other people's faces might reflect surprise, his reflects confirmation: He always seems to be nodding as if things had turned out as he expected.Together, they make this good-hearted little film into a quiet meditation on fate, tact, and poetry. If things had been different, Mario might have been the poet, and Neruda the postman, although that is an idea that occurs more easily to Mario. And it is Mario, too, who proves that poetry can work to seduce women, although the woman of his dreams, inevitably named Beatrice , is initially suspicious.

The screenplay is based on a novel, Burning Patience, by Antonio Skarmeta, but is the novel based on fact? I don't really want to know.

I don't much like the poetry of Pablo Neruda. I loathe communists in general. And I think General Pinochet did the right thing when he overthrew Salvador Allende. But somehow, I love this story of a young postman on Isla Negra, Chile and the relationship that he develops with his sole customer, the great communist poet Neruda.

Mario Jimenez has no desire to follow in the footsteps of his father and most of the other men of the island and become a fisherman. So he leaps at the chance to take over a postal route that requires only that he deliver the voluminous correspondence that comes for the island's most famous resident. Timidly at first and then more insistently, Mario calls upon Neruda to teach him about poetry and language. Then, after meeting a luminous young bar maid named Beatrice, he demands that Neruda help him to woo her. Eventually Mario wins her love, in large part through his own poetical devices, including an amusing string of metaphors.

When Salvador Allende assumes the Chilean presidency, Neruda is sent to France as ambassador and Mario becomes sort of a surrogate set of eyes and ears for the poet, sending him observations and recordings of daily life. Initially, life is good in the new Chile, but things gradually deteriorate in an onslaught of shortages, work stoppages and violence. Neruda, who in the intervening years has won the Nobel Prize for Literature, returns home to the island to die and Mario is whisked away 'for questioning.' Transformers 2007 full movie download.

Despite the down beat ending, this short sweet novel is filled with memorable, if overly idealized, characters, for whom the author clearly has great affection, and scenes of thrilling erotic passion and it is animated by a sense of the beauty of language and poetry. I recommend both the book and the Oscar winning movie adaptation of several years ago.
(Reviewed:)
Grade: (A)

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