The Tree of Wooden Clogs (Ermanno Olmi, 1978)

Batisti: Luigi Ornagi
Batistina: Francesca Morigi
Minec: Omar Brignoli
The Widow Runk: Teresa Brescianini
Anselmo: Giuseppe Brignoli
Maddalena: Lucia Pezzoli
Stefano: Franco Pilenga
Finard: Battista Travaini

Director: Ermanno Olmi
Screenplay: Ermanno Olmi
Cinematography: Ermanno Olmi
Production design: Enrico Tovaglieri
Costume design: Francesca Zucchelli

Watching almost any three-hour movie is going to be an immersive experience, but The Tree of Wooden Clogs is exceptionally so, given that it was written, directed, and beautifully photographed by Ermanno Olmi as a kind of tribute to the endurance of the people of the province of Bergamo in Northern Italy, the region Olmi came from. I compare filmmakers to Faulkner perhaps too often, but once again it seems to fit: Bergamo is Olmi's Jefferson, Mississippi -- a place where the past weighs heavy and the people have learned to endure. The film is set in Bergamo at the end of the 19th century, when a kind of feudalism still reigned: The people of The Tree of Wooden Clogs are tenant farmers, struggling to survive on a third of the produce and animals they raise, the rest of it going to the landowner who supplies them housing -- an old ramshackle building where four families live. In one apartment the bedroom, in which a woman gives birth during the film, is in a sort of attic reached only by a ladder. They are kept going by a deep piety, a constant invocation of the Holy Trinity and the saints. Political protest is something that takes place far away, and we glimpse it only when a newlywed couple makes a journey to Milan, where they spend their wedding night in an orphanage run by nuns and in the morning return to Bergamo with the year-old infant they have adopted, in part because the stipend that pays for his support will supplement the man's farm labor and the wife's work in a small mill. Their path to the orphanage is blocked briefly by troops battling with protesters. A Marxist orator also gives a speech at the local carnival, but he's mainly ignored by the people having fun. Critics attacked Olmi for not being political enough, but it's clear that one function of his film is to stir anger at human exploitation: The title comes from one of the episodes in the film, in which Minec, the young son of Batisti and Batistina, breaks the wooden clog that he wears on his daily eight-mile walk to and from school. Batisti, in desperation, chops down a tree and carves new clogs from the wood, but when the landlord finds out, the family is sent packing. Olmi's vision is steady and only occasionally slips into sentimentality, and his non-professional cast, made up of residents of Bergamo, is flawless.