Il Postino Essay

The movie “Il Postino” was pretty good for an old movie. However, if I didn’t have to do an assignment on it, I think I would have missed the messages that they were trying to get across when they made it. It had its cute moments that made me smile and then there were the corny moments that made me laugh.  It was a sweet movie and I’m glad I got to see it.

I feel the movie “Il Postino” is saying that feelings do not care what class you are in. In the movie, Pablo Neruda always wore light colors which showed he was higher in class than Mario, who wore a dark postman’s uniform. However both of them experienced love: Pablo with his wife, and Mario with Beatrice. Mario was sad when Pablo left the island to go back to his home in Chile. Apparently, Pablo did not care about Mario that much after he left. When he wrote about visiting Italy, he did not talk about his “good friend, Mario Ruopollo.” He didn’t even write him a single letter! This made Mario feel very inferior to his once friend, Mr. Neruda. Mario’s mother-in-law described Pablo’s fleeing by saying “The bird that has eaten flies away.”  Mario says that he was the one who benefited from Pablo, not vice versa. He said Pablo was a great poet loved by all the women, and that he was just a poor fisherman that asked him to write him a poem. However, when Pablo finally returned, it was too late. Only at that point, it seemed that Pablo showed real emotion towards his poor, fisherman friend.

I feel the movie is trying to say that poetry is made to make people appreciate the small details of life. I saw this in the movie when Mario was developing his metaphors. When he said, “Your smile spreads across your face like a butterfly,” it made me smile because that is something so simple that he made beautiful. I also saw this after Pablo left and Mario finally could think of things that were beautiful on his island. Something as simple as the wind coming off the cliffs, or the sad nets of the fisherman, was made so beautiful in his tape. A quote from the movie that shows that poetry is meant for other people is “Poetry doesn’t belong to those who write it, but those who need it.”

The movie says a lot of things about love, but I think the over all theme about love says that if you truly love somebody, they are the only thing that matters. This was shown through many different types of love in the film. Mario loved Pablo Neruda as a friend. He helped him win over his wife, Beatrice. Beatrice and Mario loved each other in a romantic way. When Mario was describing all of the beautiful things on his island, you could tell he had a great love for where he lived. Before Mario died, he said that he wanted to name his son Pablito. This showed his love for Pablo in a major way. Even when Beatrice said that she didn’t want to name her son that, he still insisted. Mario actually ended up dying trying to make Pablo Neruda proud. Now that is true love.