The postman is a 1994 film directed by Michael Radford and Massimo Troisi. The film tells the story of a postman in love who meets the writer Pablo Neruda in friendship and from which he will learn to love poetry.

The Plot

The film is set in 1950, when the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda is forced for political reasons to exile on an island in the Mediterranean. On the same island Mario (Massimo Troisi) dissatisfied in the work of fisherman as his father decides to remain temporarily as a postman. With his bicycle Mario delivers the mail to the poet Pablo Neruda, and slowly becomes a friend of the great Chilean personality. The poet will help Mario to conquer Beatrice Russo (Maria Grazia Cucinotta) through poems written with the heart and with highly significant gestures.

Location

At this point you are wondering why the explanation of this film and the reasons for this choice. If you have seen the film or if I have triggered your curiosity in seeing it you will make a complete journey in the sounds, colors and way of thinking typical of Mediterranean Italy. The film is in fact shot partly on the Island of Procida in Naples and for the most part on the island of Salina in the Aeolian Islands. The Island of Salina, with its vegetation and its white beaches alternating with rocky bottoms, is a typical Sicilian landscape. The sea is crystalline in color, it is indeed very easy to even see your feet directly in the water.

Man has no business with the simplicity or complexity of things

Philippe Noiret – Pablo Neruda

When you explain poetry, it becomes banal. Better than any explanation is the experience of feelings that poetry can reveal to a nature open enough to understand it.

Philippe Noiret – Pablo Neruda

If you make this much of a fuss about one poem, you’re never going to win that Nobel Prize.

Massimo Troisi – Mario Ruoppolo