MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Postman’ Delivers Heartfelt Performance

“The Postman” (“Il Postino” in the original Italian) is a tender and wistful comedy about the friendship between a celebrated poet living in exile and the simple local man who delivers his mail. Made under unique and wrenching circumstances, it gained poignancy and a kind of purity from its troubles, and an already affecting film ended up suffused with emotion.

“Postman” stars Massimo Troisi, an adored Neapolitan comic actor and director whose previous work never managed American distribution. And this film, directed by Michael Radford (“White Mischief”), an English friend fluent in Italian, was made under the worst kind of duress.

Troisi, born with congenital heart troubles, got increasingly weaker as production continued. But though he could work no more than an hour or two a day, the actor refused to postpone filming and instead put off an essential heart transplant. “Postman’s” restrained, poetic style, its director says, “was born out of this adversity, as if it had been predestined.”

The idea, based on a combination of fact and fancy, also came from Troisi, who is one of five credited screenwriters. It germinated from a novel set in Chile about the imagined relationship between Pablo Neruda, that country’s great Nobel Prize-winning poet, and a postman. The film smoothly transfers the setting to the island of Capri, off the southern coast of Italy, where Neruda was in fact exiled in 1952.

Troisi plays Mario Ruoppolo, a fisherman’s son vaguely discontented at the thought of a life at sea, a quasi-innocent whose life gets turned around by a few twists of fate.

At the movies one night, Mario sees a newsreel celebrating the arrival in Rome of Neruda, exiled for his passionate Communist beliefs. The man’s political stance, however, does not impress Mario as much as Neruda’s reputation as “a poet beloved by women.”

On the way home from the theater, Mario notices a help wanted sign. It turns out that the great Neruda will be moving to his island, and, the postmaster explains, a special mailman will be needed to handle the volume of correspondence this “great and kind person” will be receiving.

Fascinated enough by the eminence he is serving to look Chile up in an atlas, Mario slowly but doggedly begins to chat with the poet when he drops off the day’s mail, and “Postman” is especially convincing in showing how a tentative relationship could develop between these thoroughly unlikely soul mates.

For Mario, the attraction at first is the stubborn hope that knowing Neruda, perhaps even getting him to autograph a book, will help in the pursuit of women. But, almost without his knowing it, Mario begins to think about poetry as well, to ask the kind of naive, original questions about verse that can’t help but intrigue the writer. And when Mario, after not knowing what a metaphor is, comes up with one unawares and then, in a masterful acting moment, hides his head in pleased chagrin, their friendship is sealed.

Neruda is played by French actor Philippe Noiret, one of the venerable pillars of European acting, and he handles the part with grace and aplomb. But, obviously, this picture is the uncontested property of Troisi.

With superb timing, an impressive variety of facial expressions and the hangdog demeanor of an Italian Buster Keaton, Troisi brings a truth and simplicity to his character that means everything. The actor’s clear empathy with his audience keynotes his great popularity, and the plaintive weariness that illness adds to his character seems not special pleading but rather an intensification of Mario’s essential nature.

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“Postman’s” main plot mechanism has Mario seeking Neruda’s poetic assistance when he falls helplessly in love with Beatrice (Maria Grazia Cucinotta), the beautiful local barmaid.

But the film, surprisingly, goes considerably beyond questions of love and romance to deal with the nature of friendship, the power of the written word to change and enlarge lives in unanticipated ways, and the price that invariably will be asked for any such changes.

“The Postman” has given Troisi the kind of international acclaim he hoped for, but it is a success he did not live to witness. Within hours of completing work on this project, the actor died in his sleep, and 10,000 shocked admirers attended his funeral. Troisi told friends that he wanted the last piece of his old heart to get into this movie, and though the cost was overwhelming, there can be no doubt that he succeeded.

* MPAA rating: PG, for mild thematic elements. Times guidelines: some genteel references to sex.

‘The Postman (Il Postino)’ Massimo Troisi: Mario Philippe Noiret: Pablo Neruda Maria Grazia Cucinotta: Beatrice Linda Moretti: Rosa Renato Scarpa: Telegraph Operator Released by Miramax Films. Director Michael Radford. Producers Mario & Vittorio Cecchi Gori, Gaetano Daniele. Screenplay by Anna Pavignano, Michael Radford, Furio Scarpelli, Giacomo Scarpelli, Massimo Troisi, based on the novel “Burning Patience” by Antonio Skarmeta. Cinematographer Franco Di Giacomo. Editor Roberto Perpignani. Costumes Gianna Gissi. Music Luis Enrique Bacalov. Production design Lorenzo Baraldi. Sound Massimo Loffredi. Running time: 1 hour, 48 minutes.

* Playing in selected theaters.