In the opening scene of Michelangelo Frammartino’s documentary-drama “Il Dono,” the electric chime of a cellphone ring feels like a freak intrusion from another realm. At first, we watch from a fixed distance as an old farmer does yard work with a couple of young men, their actions unfolding in what feels like real time. Then there’s the ring, which would seem innocuous enough were we not already so immersed in the man’s rural existence: the birdsong, the trill of insects. When he picks up the device left behind by one of his young helpers, he treats it like an alien object. It’s the first time he’s ever seen such a gadget.
“Il Dono” premiered in Europe in 2003, but its recent restoration has occasioned its long-delayed arrival to New York. Serendipitously so, as the film’s slow, meditative rhythms offer a reprieve from citygoers daily grinds — should they be willing to stash away that screen and lock into a much more languorous, almost mystical wavelength.
Like Frammartino’s other films, “Le Quattro Volte” and “Il Buco,” “Il Dono” is set around his family’s hometown in the mountainous Italian region of Calabria. The almost wordless film follows the quotidian lives of two people: the old man, played by the director’s grandfather, Angelo Frammartino; and an unstable young woman who reluctantly exchanges sex for car rides around town.
Despite the region’s visual magnificence — its winding cobblestone roads and rolling hills — there’s a melancholic emptiness to each of Frammartino’s striking compositions, accented by the deliberate, solitary movements of its few (mostly aging) inhabitants. The young woman’s story tells us that survival means escape, but otherwise “Il Dono” manages to strike a balance between damnation and idolatry of its medieval setting. We’re sucked in, enraptured, even as we feel its lives fading away.
Il Dono
Not rated. In Italian, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 20 minutes. In theaters.
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