An elderly shepherd living in a hilltop village in Italy spends his days tending to his goat herd among the rolling hills passing mounds used to make charcoal, before retiring to bed, drinking a strange powder which we can presume he takes for the hope of relieving some of the symptoms of his illness. Later we learn the powder is dust swept from the church, which he exchanges for goats milk.

As the village prepares for a parade for a saint, the shepherds dog harangues the locals who pass it, barking furiously and eventually causing a small van to crash into the goat pen letting the herd loose through the village as the dog strives to get 'his' job done as the shepherd seems to have slept in. We later discover the man has died. But life goes on and with a nanny goat giving birth the shepherd is perhaps reborn. The white kid stands out among the other young goats that are to start kept in the pen whilst the adults go to graze. Left to their own devices, anything and everything becomes something of intrigue and just like children, the kids investigate all.

Eventually, the kids get to join the adults grazing, but the young white kid gets separated and as the seasons suddenly change, we presume the young goat dies at the base at a vast pine tree. And there the cycle continues as the tree is felled for another celebration in the village. Eventually the tree is cut into pieces and a new mound is made, with the wood placed inside to make a new batch of charcoal. When ready, the charcoal is divvied up and given to the locals.

This exquisite Italian film tells a story of life; it is a slow, yet beguiling film, one that easily can alienate as much as be utterly embraced. The narrative is bare, but there is one and even without dialogue the film has much to say. The beginning with the elderly man sets a slow pace that is broken upon his death. His sheepdog steels the film within the remarkable single camera scene where he tries in vain to draw attention to the fact the shepherd has failed to rise. As locals run from the dog fearing he is just vicious, the dog pulls a rock wedged under the tire of a small van sending it crashing into the goat pen. The control of the dog is superb, brilliantly funny, yet devastating as we realise something must be wrong.

As we progress into the next segment, animals again steal the film as we spend time within the herd of goats. There is something both engrossing and enjoyable watching these animals and the kids are a sheer delight, full of childlike inquisitive and playful, the intimacy in watching them at close quarters is actually quite moving. The later part of the film slows again as the village prepares the tree which then becomes part of the lengthy although fascinating process of making charcoal.

Sprinkled with wonderful humour, such as the scene where the shepherd having taking all precautions to keep them in the pot, returns home to find the snails he collected all over the kitchen having escaped or just the humour of the animals involved. This joy is coupled with almost heartbreaking sadness, the dog striving to do his job without his master or the notion that dust from the church somehow contains a 'holy' ingredient that aides illness. It is a film that will divide audiences, but for a film that really tells a very simple story without doing very much it manages to convey so with profound beauty and emotion.

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I went to see this movie at Renoir-Curzon in central London last bank Monday.

I was with two friends of mine: another Calabrian and a Sicilian. I invited them telling the movie was shot in Calabria, but I was worried the plot wouldn't interest them.

I was wrong, this movie astonished the three of us completely: I was not only fascinated by the beautiful views of the Calabrian countryside, but the idea of mixing philosophic concepts with very basic, rural and remote communities still sticks in my mind.

"Le quattro volte" means "the four times" and the movie gives an interpretation of Pythagoras (who taught and settled in Calabria in the 6th century BC) concept of four successive lives that each of us holds: mineral, vegetable, animal and human.

In the movie there are all the elements of this concept shown in a very poetic and amusing way: we have an old goatherd as human, a kidskin as animal, a tree as vegetable and coal (carbon) as mineral. All connected in a cycle of life and death to symbolise the re-incarnation.

The sound of nature and rural human activities is the soundtrack of the movie, it makes us understand we, as human beings, are not at the centre of the universe, we should be aware of the elements we are part of and live in harmony with them.

All this makes Le Quattro volte an absolute masterpiece: 10/10

Although most of what we know about the Greek philosopher Pythagoras derives from sources written four hundred years after his death, he is regarded to have been a believer in the doctrine known as the transmigration of souls, the idea that the soul of man can reincarnate in different forms: as man, animal, vegetable, or mineral depending on one's karma. Referred to in Indian tradition as samsara, the idea of transmigration has recently been depicted in Apichatpong Weerasethakul's, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, where Boonmee's son is reborn as a monkey ghost and one of Boonmee's past lives is as an erotic talking catfish.

The doctrine that all things are part of the divine whether a tree, a lump of charcoal, an animal, or a human being is also dramatized in Le Quattro Volte, written and directed by Michelangelo Frammartino. Set in a small village in Calabria in Southern Italy where Pythagoras is said to have lived, Le Quattro Volte is a quietly meditative film that is divided into four sections separated by a blank screen. There is no narration or dialogue other than the dialogue of nature: the bleating of goats, the sheep bells, and the rush of wind blowing through the trees. Frammartino offers no clues or connections to the viewer as to what each segment represents. It is a film, he warns, in which "the viewer must do all the work." As the film opens, an old man (Giuseppe Fuda),emerges out of the smoke rising from a charcoal kiln, tending to his goats in a pastoral setting that may not have changed for hundreds of years. The goat herder has a persistent cough that he tends to by exchanging goat's milk for dust on the floor of the local church and mixing it with a glass of water. When he realizes that his medicine has disappeared, he goes back to the church late at night but it is closed. Without his elixir, he dies the following morning in his bed surrounded by a herd of goats that made their way into his bedroom, one standing on the top of his table.

Taking a page from Sergei Dvortsevoy's Tulpan, the scene shifts suddenly from the darkness of the old man's tomb to the birth of a live goat with its fluid being licked by its mother, a sequence that suggests the continuation of life. We follow the young kid as it grows steadily from taking its first steps to playing with other young goats. His development is interrupted, however, by a ten-minute sequence showing revelers taking part in a passion play celebrating Good Friday. Hilariously the old man's dog, after being chased off by villagers after annoying them with constant barking, retaliates by unblocking the wheels of their truck parked on a hillside causing it to roll down the hill, freeing a herd of goats enclosed in a pen.

As the goats are led through the forest, the baby goat becomes separated from the herd and wanders in the heavy brush until he lies down at the foot of a tall pine tree. With that, the film moves into another stage that shows the process of cutting down and stripping the tall tree. To complete the cycle, the tree is then made into a hut where wood and straw are converted into charcoal to provide heat for the winter, suggesting the oft-repeated phrase from The Book of Common Prayer, "ashes to ashes, dust to dust." Lacking in what is generally considered to be drama or character identification,Le Quattro Volte can be slow going and abstract, a film that rarely engages the emotions, yet it has a serene and contemplative beauty that allows its message of the impermanence of life to become manifest. As Eric Benet put it in his well-known song Dust in the Wind, "Don't hang on. Nothing lasts forever, but the earth and sky, it's there always and all your money won't another minute buy. Dust. . . all we are is dust in the wind. Dust in the wind…Time for the healing to begin."