Franco Piavoli's 'Voices Through Time' (1996)

[00:00:00] Welcome to another episode of Her Head in Films. I'm Caitlin and I'm your host. On this podcast, I share my thoughts and feelings about the films I watch. They tend to be art house and

[00:00:32] world cinema. What makes this podcast unique is that I weave together my life experiences with a personal and emotional discussion of film. I explore the impacts that cinema has on me and why I connect so deeply to it. As I like to say, my head isn't in the

[00:00:52] clouds, my head is in films. Today's episode is about Franco Piavolis' luminous 1996 documentary Voices Through Time. This is not a well-known film, but it is one of my all-time favorite films and I have been wanting to talk about it for such a

[00:01:13] long time. It basically looks at people who live in a small village in Italy. While it's a documentary, it has such an intimacy about it. It's hard to believe that Piavolis captured the kind of moments that he captured in this film.

[00:01:37] There is such a richness about it as well. You really feel like you're watching people's lives unfold. They're so alive on the screen. They're not self-conscious the way maybe you would see people in a documentary. It feels like you're a fly on the wall just

[00:01:59] watching people live in this village. It's hard to describe the feeling of watching the film. I will say that the first time that I watched Voices Through Time, it was one of the most powerful viewing experiences that I've ever had in my life. I've been

[00:02:20] a cinephile for well over a decade now, more like about 14-15 years. I've watched thousands of films and me watching this film was up there with the first time I saw Dryers, The Passion of Joan of Arc, or Malik's The Tree of Life, or

[00:02:43] Kishlovsky's The Double Life of Varanique. It was almost spiritual for me. I could not believe what was unfolding on the screen and how beautiful and life-affirming and radiant it was. It just has a spiritual dimension to it. And maybe I sound

[00:03:11] corny or kind of ridiculous to bring spirituality into cinema, but for me the spiritual has nothing to do with religion or a belief in God. For me the spiritual is tapping into something greater than ourselves and I think that

[00:03:35] some of the best art does that. By that I mean great art stirs our souls. It moves us, it brings up very deep emotions inside of us and that's what Voices Through Time did for me. That's why I'm talking about it. The

[00:03:57] problem with this film is trying to talk about it at all because it's so much more than a film. It is a feeling, it's an experience and that's what I've always tried to excavate in this podcast is not just the film itself but the

[00:04:21] feeling that the film gives me. And I think some of my listeners absolutely understand my mission with these episodes and maybe every episode is like a little bit of a manifesto about life for me and about the salvation of art.

[00:04:43] But this podcast has never just been about the films themselves. It's always been about my personal emotional response to the films and what they make me feel inside. It's about the feeling that the films generate and how

[00:05:06] cinema becomes part of us, how cinema becomes part of our lives, how a work of art becomes part of our soul. That's always what I've tried to get at. That's always what I've tried to excavate when I talk about films. I

[00:05:27] hesitated in trying to talk about Voices Through Time and I think that it is difficult because it's so poetic. It's basically an assemblage or a collage of moments in an Italian village in the 1990s. It's just children

[00:05:47] and adults living their lives, dancing, playing outside, looking at their crush across the way, lying in the grass kissing. It's all these little moments. And how do you talk about that? It's like when I tried to do my episode about the

[00:06:11] tree of life and what's so powerful is what these images generate inside of us. They can spark our own memories. I'm 35 years old as I record this. I just turned 35. And so when I watch these children, when I watch the children

[00:06:35] outside playing and when I see them on their bicycles and I see them playing in the woods, I think about my childhood and me being 35 and watching the film is probably a very different experience than a 25-year-old watching the film

[00:06:54] because for a 25-year-old, their childhood is closer. It's not as far away for them. What's beautiful about the film is that it encompasses all of life from childhood to old age. So we get the human condition at all the different stages of

[00:07:15] life. We see young people, middle-aged people, old people and the way that life shifts and changes, the way that relationships change. So I'm 35 watching it and I'm further away from my childhood. I'm further away from the woods

[00:07:37] and the forest and playing with friends outside until it got dark and the fireflies came out. It still lives inside me and when I watch this film, I'm reminded of those moments of my childhood but there's maybe a bittersweetness about it

[00:07:58] because it is further away than it is for a 20-year-old or a 25-year-old and that's what film can do. It can bring up our own memories. It can bring up our own feelings and this film is very rich in that way where it made me think

[00:08:22] about all kinds of things as I was watching it and that's why I'm talking about it or I'm attempting to talk about it. And maybe you can never fully articulate everything that you feel about a film. I've always known that

[00:08:38] in a way I was kind of engaging at a failing endeavor that there's no way that I can explain to you everything that this film evoked for me. I mean, I was there watching it for the first time just on my laptop. I'll never see it on

[00:09:00] the big screen probably and I was like... I was in my 30s. I just watched it like a couple of years ago and I was like... how have I made it to my 30s, watched thousands of films and I didn't know about this film? And what a miracle

[00:09:23] that this film found me and that it came into my life. I truly believe that art finds us when we are supposed to find it and maybe that's silly to think or silly to say but it has happened to me over and over and over again

[00:09:44] where I found books and music and films that spoke to me in such a deep way at the exact moment that I needed it. And with voices through time I felt very rejuvenated by it, which I'll talk about in a moment

[00:10:07] but something that's very powerful about this film is its vastness. It really, like I said, encompasses all of life and I think that's extraordinary and how Piavole does it is he finds the universal in the personal. He finds the universal in the specific

[00:10:33] and Franco Piavole is not a well-known director but he's made quite a few films. He's an Italian director. A lot of his films have been made in the same area of Italy. His work is very difficult to find here in the United States.

[00:10:49] I'm not sure if it's been released in other parts of the world. He reminds me a little bit in terms of his obscurity but his genius. He reminds me of Theo Angelopoulos who's a Greek director

[00:11:08] and his work is also very difficult to find here in the United States. One of my all-time favorite films is Landscape in the Mist and I have lamented for years and years that Angelopoulos is not,

[00:11:24] first of all he's not better known but second of all he's not accessible to most cinephiles unless you happen to come across his films on YouTube maybe if somebody uploaded it but he is not. He's not in any kind of official box set or something.

[00:11:48] He's not in the criterion collection and Franco Piavole is similar. Well I would say Franco Piavole is even more obscure. Most people have not heard of this man or his work. He mainly has done documentaries right now he's in his 90s.

[00:12:04] He's worked for decades. He had a film in the 1980s called The Blue Planet which is a bit similar to Voices Through Time because it explores nature and it's poetic and it's like a collage or an assemblage type film and Andrei Tarkovsky crazed that film.

[00:12:27] And he did a film adaptation of the Odyssey called Nostos. That's one of his rare narrative feature films but a lot of his work are documentaries just capturing nature people in a small Italian village. So there's something very transcendent and poetic and spiritual about his work.

[00:12:57] And I've seen quite a few of his films but they've been hard to find. I had to mainly find them on YouTube or other places because they're not officially streaming they're not officially streaming anywhere and I don't understand why and I hope that a day

[00:13:16] will come when his work is lalded and more widespread and more available to people because I just think it's incredibly resplendent and beautiful and I feel really grateful for it and I feel like Voices Through Time found me at the perfect time in my life.

[00:13:38] And I'm glad that it found me when it did and I didn't have to go one more day without experiencing his films. That's how I felt about it. I felt like I had come across a treasure and I keep wondering like why is he not better known?

[00:13:57] Why isn't he more appreciated? I've really tried to tell people about him. I've tried to spread the word but nobody listens to me. I'm like I'm nobody on mine. I barely have any kind of social media platform. Nobody listens to me. I wish they did but they don't.

[00:14:18] So I've been telling anybody who would listen to me. I've been telling them about Franco Piavole and what I've realized is that often the reason why some of the greatest artists are not more well known or not appreciated

[00:14:41] is because I think certain things are meant to be a hidden gem. I think certain things are never going to be mainstream because the vast majority of people do not have the capacity to appreciate it. They just don't and some things are meant to

[00:15:03] be small and intimate and a hidden gem and they will always be that way and that's okay because not everything is for everybody. Not everything is commercial. Not everything is mainstream or conventional. His work doesn't have a plot.

[00:15:24] It's not about any kind of plot. It's about the arrangement of all of these moments of life. These rich luminous precious moments of life. Children playing and a couple kissing in the grass. The sun rising. The moon rising.

[00:15:52] The moon caught in the trees. Young love, first love, first heartbreak. There's all these little moments. The films are just punctuated with these moments. And not everybody appreciates that. There's not even any dialogue in voices through time.

[00:16:15] It's a very languid film as well. It's slow in a very wonderful way. It's the perfect rhythm, the rhythm of life in a way. And it unfolds exactly how it needs to unfold but not everybody is open to that.

[00:16:36] Not everybody wants to watch that kind of film. Some people want more narrative or they need something else. You know, to me watching the film it's like a spiritual experience.

[00:16:49] To other people it may not be that way. It may be pretentious or slow or whatever they think it is because art is so incredibly subjective and it should be. The film that I watch and the film that you watch are totally different because I bring

[00:17:11] my subjectivity, I bring my memories, I bring my life, I bring my yearnings to the film and my life experiences. That's why I think it needs to just be okay when people don't like films because sometimes we're looking for things in films that are very different than

[00:17:33] somebody else. And there are certain films and certain directors who I don't like and I don't connect to because of my preferences when it comes to film and what I'm looking for and what

[00:17:49] I'm wanting and what I'm searching for. And I don't find it in that film or I don't find it in that director's work. And I'm different just like you're different and we all are and we're all like contradictions and walking contradictions and all of that.

[00:18:11] We're different ages, we're at different life stages and have different experiences. And so when I watch something I could have a totally different view on it than somebody else. But that's also what's fascinating about art is what it can bring up for us but it can be

[00:18:31] different for every person. That's something I kind of appreciate and I've always just tried to share my interpretation, my subjective response. And that's what I'm trying to do with voices through time is to try to describe the feeling of the film and what it means to me.

[00:18:57] You know we have big unanswerable questions about life, don't we? How was the universe made? Why are we here? What happens when we die? And all we ever have are all the small moments of our lives.

[00:19:16] And we ask ourselves does any of it matter? Of course it does. It must. We're here and that matters. We're trying our best, we're searching for love and beauty and meaning and connection. We watch as time passes, as the years pass, the seasons pass.

[00:19:45] And we get called up in all of it without even knowing where any of it is leading. And I think that we forget what a miracle it is to be here. And voices through time is the kind of film because it focuses on all those moments that

[00:20:11] accumulate, all those initiations, those passages of time and those experiences that mark us and that are part of a life that is unfolding. You know going from a child into an adult falling

[00:20:37] in love, because it focuses on all those moments I think it reminds us to cherish them, just to cherish our life, to be alive in the moment. And I think that that's something that

[00:20:55] poetry does as well. And his films and voices through time in particular is poetic. I see it as poetry, as a form of poetry in a lot of ways because it's consecrating and sanctifying the

[00:21:14] ordinary luminous moments of life. And something that I'd love to do is to read poetry. Nothing makes me happier than a Sunday afternoon when I am with a book of poetry, reading the poems. Usually it's Mary Oliver or Jane Kenyon or Linda Gregg

[00:21:45] or it's a poetry anthology. And I'm just reading my poems and I'm just feeling alive in my life. And I'm just feeling grateful for my life. That's what happens when I read certain poetry.

[00:22:05] Like I just love the way a poem can capture a moment that would have gone unnoticed or would have just been lost to oblivion, right? But the poem captures it. I think the best poetry

[00:22:24] does do that. Or I guess I should say the poetry that I love, the poetry that I love does that. It captures a moment that would be lost. And so when I read the poem, recently I read a poem about a woman washing her mother's hair, for instance.

[00:22:53] That's just a small intimate, ordinary moment. But when I read that poem, it made me think about my mom and taking care of her and doing her hair. And so the poem,

[00:23:17] it anchors you in your own life and in the moments of your life. And maybe you'll be more alert. Maybe you'll pay more attention to when you're, you know, maybe you'll pay attention the next

[00:23:35] time you're spending time with somebody you love. And you'll really be present and grounded in that moment. And think about what it means and think about how important and special it is

[00:23:48] because of this poem that you read. And one of the greatest pleasures of my life is just, like I said, a Sunday afternoon of free time where I can read a book of poetry and revel in the language

[00:24:07] of it. And I feel that way with voices through time. It's such a pleasure to watch the film. I've watched it over and over again. I've seen it multiple times. I never get tired of it. I feel

[00:24:22] like it contains these secrets about life. I feel like it's telling me something about my own existence and what it means to be alive, the beauty of it. That's what it reminds me of

[00:24:40] and makes me think about. I know this film like I know my soul. That's how it feels. And I think maybe the best films, that's what they make me feel is that I know this film the way I know myself.

[00:24:59] I know the contours of the film and it becomes part of me. That's what I'm trying to describe. I believe that a great work of art can crack open the world. This is something that I've started

[00:25:16] to formulate for myself, this idea that a great work of art can crack open the world and it can break us open. It can change us. It can show us possibilities. We might never be the same after we watch that film or hear that album

[00:25:43] or read that book or read that poem. It can crack open the world. I feel that way about music. I recently watched Rui Chisakamoto Opus, which he filmed in the last months of his life.

[00:26:03] And it's just him on the piano playing his music. We're seeing a man who is dying because he had cancer at the time and he knew that his time was limited on this earth.

[00:26:18] And it's hard to describe what watching that was like for me. It was very moving. And his music would be an example of the world cracking open. Life expands. Life expands. You feel something that maybe you didn't know you could feel. You find something

[00:26:44] that you didn't know you could find. And his music has done that for me. Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, you know? Or I think about neutral milk hotel and in the airplane over the sea.

[00:26:59] I love that album. One of my favorite albums, for sure. And I think that cracked open the world. There's all kinds of films and books and music that has cracked open my world and made me

[00:27:18] larger as a person, expanded me, expanded my soul, brought a sense of spaciousness to my life. And I'm so grateful for that. And voices through time would be an example of just cracking open my world. I had never really seen a film like this before.

[00:27:44] And maybe with, like, every film it's a different feeling. You never feel the same feeling twice. You just can't. Every film is unique. Every film is, like, so special in that way. And I'm reminded of

[00:28:07] Joseine Sabzian, the main person in Abbas Kira Stommi's 1990 film Close-Up. It's one of my favorite films. I think it's the best film of the 1990s. I don't have a problem saying that at all.

[00:28:24] I think it's the greatest film of the 90s. Unfortunately, Sabzian is not with us anymore. He was, for those of you who have seen that film, you know he was such a passionate cinephile. He loved cinema. He often lost himself in it. It was life affirming for him.

[00:28:47] It was a passion and you could argue it was an obsession. And I think he would admit that it was an obsession. That it took him over and it took over his life.

[00:28:58] But I think he was a very sensitive soul in a lot of ways. And there's this documentary about him or this interview with him that's included in the Criterion Collection edition of Close-Up, I think.

[00:29:14] And in it he says something like, with every great film I watch, I feel reborn. And I think that is such a perfect way to talk about cinema and to talk about the films that we

[00:29:28] deeply love. The films that crack open the world, the films that change our lives, the films that save us. They are a kind of rebirth. We feel renewed. We feel reborn and rejuvenated by these

[00:29:48] films. And they, I think that they unlock something inside of us. And I don't think that I've ever been the same since Voices Through Time unlocked something inside me. I need a film like this.

[00:30:10] I live for films like this. They don't happen a lot. I watch a lot of films. I don't watch as much as I used to. But I've seen lots of films and not every single one of them can be some kind of

[00:30:26] spiritual or transcendent experience. I don't expect them to be. I can watch films just for the pleasure and the enjoyment of it. But when I started to watch Voices Through Time, I knew that something special was happening. I knew that I was coming into contact with

[00:30:47] something very rare and very unique and special. And it unlocked something inside me, as you can tell. All these feelings are flowing out. And I've never gotten over it. And in a way, these are the films

[00:31:06] that haunt me the most are the ones that make me feel things that I find difficult to articulate and to put into words. I need art like I need breath. That's just the truth. I need it like I need breath.

[00:31:25] Some of us do. Some of us need art in a way that maybe other people don't understand. Those of us who are lonely and forgotten and kind of the outcasts of the world, that's how I often feel. Like, I'm an outsider. I'm an outcast. I don't fit anywhere.

[00:31:48] I don't belong anywhere. And so I always made a home inside of art. And that's what kept me going. What kept me going through the darkest moments of my life was the music of Tori Amos and

[00:32:09] the poetry of Sylvia Plough or Mary Oliver and films like Voices Through Time. And I'm not ashamed to say that. Not ashamed to say that I need art like I need breath. It's my nourishment. It really is. It's my nourishment. And it gives meaning to my life.

[00:32:36] And that's why I talk about it. That's why I share it the way that I do. Is that I'm just trying to share why I love things. But this film unlocked something inside me.

[00:32:53] I think it unlocked some memories because it's made in 1996. It captures the world of the 90s, which is the time when I grew up. It's a time before the internet as we know it now.

[00:33:08] A time before social media, a time before smartphones. And we're all vulnerable to idealizing the past and to being sort of like overly nostalgic. But I don't think there's any denying that

[00:33:28] the 90s were different than the time that we're living through now. And I do have concerns about social media that I'm not going to ramble on about in this episode. I have concerns about

[00:33:43] a lot of things and the way that we are very fractured as a society and disconnected and I fear that we are missing out on our lives. I fear that we are missing out on the kinds of

[00:34:01] moments or not noticing them or living them fully or being present in them the way that you see and voices through time. And so this film reminds me of the 90s or something about the light.

[00:34:18] I don't know what it is about films from the 90s, but there is something so soft and cozy and special about the light in this film in particular. The way it hits faces.

[00:34:38] There's just nothing like it. I don't even know how to put it into words. The way the light hits people's skin. The way that the people glow. And it was a time when nobody has a phone.

[00:34:56] Nobody is holding a phone in this film. Nobody is going to hold a phone in any film from the 90s. People are present in life in a different way than they are now. They're talking to each other.

[00:35:12] They're with each other. They're with the moment. And it feels at times like we've lost that. And it just, I don't know, it just reminded me of growing up. It reminded me of when I was a

[00:35:31] little girl and spending time with my parents or spending time with my dad and playing outside with kids in the neighborhood. And I remember that light. I remember that golden light. I think it's

[00:35:57] the light of our memories. And I see that light and voices through time. And sometimes even though I'm 35 and I'm so far away from my childhood at this point, sometimes I'm still right there.

[00:36:15] It is still so real to me. And I know others can relate to that. Where I'm like right in my childhood bedroom. I can hear the crickets outside. I can see the moon through my bedroom

[00:36:32] window. I can see the chair and the CD player and the posters on my wall and my closet and my CDs and my television that I had in my VCR. I can see it all. It's right there, even though it's all

[00:36:55] gone now. And I don't think I know how to deal with that, that it really is all gone. That's why we need to be reminded to really live in the moment that we have. Because it will all be gone.

[00:37:18] It will all be gone. And I used to be so aware of that even when I was a little girl. I would be so aware of like, oh this isn't going to last forever.

[00:37:32] And it's almost like I would mourn the ending of things before they had ended. So even as they were happening, I would already be grieving the loss before I'd ever lost them.

[00:37:49] I remember when I was in high school, maybe it was my senior year and it must have been. And this was after my dad passed away. I remember like one of the last days of

[00:38:04] senior year. I mean that was when I was graduating high school. And that experience would be over. And I remember us taking like a class photo. I think it was like my English class, potentially.

[00:38:18] I think it was. And I'll never forget taking that class photo. I don't even have it. I don't even know what it looks like. And I remember just thinking in that moment,

[00:38:29] like we'll never be here again with each other. You know, a lot of these kids I had been in school with for years, I didn't know them that well. I always struggled to connect with

[00:38:43] people. I never felt like I fit anywhere. I felt very invisible my whole life. And so I think about like the kids that I went to school with and I doubt they even remember

[00:38:57] me. I doubt they even like have memories of me. I mean you don't know. You don't know. Maybe somebody remembers me. I'm not sure. I'm not sure how people saw me. I was really shy.

[00:39:13] I had really bad social anxiety. I struggled just to like connect with people. Like I've said, I never really felt authentic. I never felt like I could be my true self with people.

[00:39:29] I didn't really have friends when I was in school either. I was just really on the margins, kind of an outcast, I guess you could say. I never like found my people or anything like that.

[00:39:44] But I remember the last day of that particular class and that photo. And I was very overwhelmed by the feeling that we would never be in that moment again. That we would never be together in

[00:40:01] that classroom, that it was over. That I would never see these people again. That I would walk out of that school and it would just all be over. And I think that the people I went to

[00:40:18] school with, they kind of had a sense of the future. They were going off to college and they had dreams. And I had buried my father and I felt like I went with him. And I didn't have dreams anymore.

[00:40:41] And I couldn't imagine the future. I didn't even think I would make it to my 30s. That's the truth. I didn't think I would ever make it to my 30s. I spent so many years

[00:41:03] drowning and I didn't know what to do. And I didn't know how to live. And now I'm in my 30s. And it's scary. There's something scary about it because I wasn't prepared. But

[00:41:30] at the same time, I feel like I got a second chance at life in my 30s. And I feel grateful to be here despite the pain, despite what I've lost, what I went through.

[00:41:55] I have, I've finally started to try to heal and to live again. Maybe I've been reborn. I have. I think I went through a rebirth and an awakening and a transformation in my 30s. The thing is,

[00:42:21] for a long time, I was dying. But now I finally love life. I finally choose life. I choose to be here. I didn't always feel that way. I didn't always want to be here. I didn't know how to be here after losing him.

[00:42:51] I didn't know what it meant to be here with that, with that horror of burying him and losing him. But I finally do want to be here. And I turned 35 recently and on my birthday, I was happy to be alive.

[00:43:25] I'm happy to be alive. It washed over me, that feeling. I'm happy to be alive. And I will hold on to that feeling for as long as I can. It doesn't mean that life is perfect and great, but I cherish life in a different way.

[00:43:51] On my birthday, I thought about my father. I thought about the world we're living in with such violence and destruction. And I thought that being devoted to life and being as alive as possible is the greatest way to honor the dead.

[00:44:19] I was willing to die for him for a very long time, wasn't I? Now I live for him. My life is about honoring him and remembering him. And I want to live.

[00:44:47] And I couldn't always say that until recently, that I want to be alive. I'm happy to be alive. And that's a very powerful realization. I'm still letting it sink in. And so a film like this, that's what it's about. It's about being here, about being alive.

[00:45:21] It's about not just sleepwalking through your life and dissociating the way that I did for a long time, but about really being present and awake and joyful and just cherishing this moment. There's something so beautiful about this film where we see the children playing and then we'll

[00:45:55] we see the older people, the adults, those in their middle age. We see them dancing. We see them talking. The thing is that they're just like the children. We all get older, we all age.

[00:46:14] We live in a society, particularly in America, that is obsessed with youth, obsessed with it. I don't think you notice it until you get in your 30s and you're not the 20-something anymore.

[00:46:30] There is such a premium put on being very young and people really idealize that time in their lives when they were a teenager. Well, as you can tell, I can't do that. I can't look back on my teen years.

[00:46:49] I didn't have the normal experiences. I wasn't going to the prom. I wasn't falling in love. I wasn't going through those experiences. I went through something else, something much more painful.

[00:47:11] And so I think a lot of people kind of live in the past. They want to go back to the past. But there is value in getting older. There is value in experiencing more of life.

[00:47:30] And that's what I love about this film, Voices Through Time, is that it shows the older people also enjoying their lives just like the young people are. They're at different stages and going through different things. But there is still so much to live. Life doesn't stop at 30.

[00:47:53] Life doesn't stop at a particular age. Life is always going. It's a river. It's a stream. It goes and goes. It doesn't stop. It doesn't stop for anybody. And you have to go with it.

[00:48:08] And if you don't go with it, you drown. I think for a long time I resisted the flow of life. I became so separated from life. And what happened for me in my 30s was that I

[00:48:27] reconnected to life in a different way to my own life force, I guess. And so this film is about going on the journey of life. You can't stay a teenager forever. You can't stay 20 forever.

[00:48:47] There's still so much of life to live. I feel like I got a second chance and it makes me want to just cherish things more. And I do. Every day, I really cherish life.

[00:49:08] I really feel devoted to life, devoted to myself. I think in a world that has normalized destruction, violence or genocide for months, I watched the annihilation of Palestinians and Gaza. In a world that normalizes that and tolerates it and allows it, you better be

[00:49:41] devoted to life. You better worship life. You cannot worship death. You can't. These are very high stakes. It means something to be alive. It means something because it's stolen from other people. It was stolen from my father

[00:50:06] because the circumstances of his death were preventable and he should not have died. When I celebrated my birthday this year, I knew and thought about all the people who celebrated their final birthday and are not here anymore, including my dad. Life is precious.

[00:50:33] It's cliche, but it's true. Life is rare and precious and miraculous and sacred. And voices through time reminds me of that. Reminds me of the arc of life, the journey of life, and that there is richness at every stop and at every point and at every stage.

[00:50:59] I feel like I lost a lot of time. That's something that I still grieve and that I still struggle with. I feel like I lost a lot of my life because of trauma and grief, but I can't go back. I can't get any of it back.

[00:51:17] I only have right now. I only have this moment. And so this film is about all of life, time, memory, youth, old age. There's both the eternal and the universal in this film. And I love the way that Piavole focuses on faces and bodies,

[00:51:45] on skin, on looks and glimpses. He particularly shows that with the young people, the way they still glance at each other, the way they look on their faces, betrays everything that they feel, all the hurt, all the longing and the yearning. I love seeing regular human faces.

[00:52:11] It's so interesting that we grow up. We live in a time right now with social media and very edited photos of people and an obsession with youth and anti-aging and anti-wrinkle and just this hyper

[00:52:27] focus, this crazy hyper focus on particularly women's faces and women's bodies and looking a certain way. And I love how in this film we see wrinkles and we see blemishes and we see their skin

[00:52:46] and we see freckles when we see the topography of a human face, all the lines and wrinkles, all the lines and wrinkles, the textures, the reality, the tangible beauty of a human face

[00:53:07] and a human body. And they are luminous no matter what age they are. They are luminous in this film. They're just living their lives. They're living their lives and the camera is there to capture it.

[00:53:24] I don't know if certain things were staged. I don't know. I don't know the full filming schedule of the film or what happened or anything like that. Maybe certain things were staged. It's totally possible, but I still feel like we are watching life unfold in a very

[00:53:53] authentic and intimate way. And the people and the villagers that he chose to be in the film, they have such striking faces. They convey so much through their eyes and through the looks

[00:54:10] that they give. There's just so much beauty in this film and it's a film with soul. It's just a soulful film and it's hard to describe it when you come across it.

[00:54:27] When you come across a film with soul, but it's there. It's there on the screen and it stirred my soul and it moved my soul. And these are just ordinary moments. There's no big plot.

[00:54:44] There's no big plot. There's no big narrative. I guess I haven't talked a lot about the film. I've just talked about these random moments of the moon and kids playing a young boy

[00:54:59] and his face in the flowers or him lying by a stream. A young girl looking at herself in the mirror as the sunlight hits her face. That's what the film is. It's just everyday life.

[00:55:19] What happens when you get up and you go about your day and that's what our lives are made of? They're punctuated by the big moments by falling in love or getting our hearts broken

[00:55:34] or losing somebody we love. But the vast majority of our lives are just these moments. It's the stuff of life and he managed to make a film that captured that and touched it. I think this film touches

[00:55:58] the essence of life. That's what I think he did. I mean, what an accomplishment and it changed me. So those are my thoughts about Voices Through Time. I appreciate you listening. Until next time, keep watching great films.