Il Postino Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		0.5
Overall		4.0

Il Postino Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Svet Atanasov January 22, 2016

Michael Radford's "Il Postino" a.k.a. "The Postman" (1994) arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Warner Bros. Italia. The supplemental features on the disc include an original trailer for the film and two extended scenes. In Italian, with optional English and Italian SDH subtitles for the main feature. Region-B "locked".

The postman

The plan was to have Massimo Troisi direct Il Postino, but he fell seriously ill and called Michael Radford to finish what he had started. Troisi still played the poor postman, but he passed away a day after the film was completed.

The film tells the story of Mario (Troisi, What Time Is It?, Splendor), a shy and poor man living with his father on a beautiful but secluded Italian island. Life has a steady rhythm here and it seems like nothing exciting ever happens.

But one day the famous Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (played by the great Philippe Noiret, Cinema Paradiso, Tango) arrives on the island and everything changes. Mario becomes fascinated with the foreigner and decides to become a postman so that he can see him more often. The big piles of letters that women send to Neruda then quickly convince Mario that he must become a poet.

The two men begin talking and eventually become friends. Their relationship, however, is more like that between a teacher and his pupil. When they are together they actually learn from each other -- Mario carefully listens to Neruda when he explains what it takes to be a great poet, while Neruda observes Mario and discovers great truths in his simple observations about life.

Eventually, Mario meets the stunningly beautiful Beatrice (Maria Grazia Cucinotta, The Second Wife) and falls madly in love with her. But he is so shy that he can’t bring himself to tell her how he feels about her. Determined to win her heart, he asks his friend Neruda to help him out.

Il Postino is a simple and very beautiful yet enormously sad film. There are a number of sequences where it becomes quite clear that Troisi simply isn’t well and that he struggles to be the romantic postman. The eyes never lie.

And yet one never doubts that the postman is a real person. He is a simple man who has fallen in love and suddenly realized that he does not know how to express himself before the woman of his dreams. Every man knows the feeling – she is the right woman, the one that would make him the happiest man on Earth, but how do you tell her that without sounding utterly ridiculous?

Noiret is equally convincing as the communist poet who knows exactly what to say to win a woman’s heart. Perhaps only the fact that he must recite his lines in a foreign language makes him sound a bit odd at times.

Cucinotta isn’t well-known on this side of the Atlantic and this is quite unfortunate because she is incredibly beautiful. There is natural rawness in her performance that very much reminds of the one that Monica Bellucci’s character had in Giuseppe Tornatore’s Malèna.

The panoramic vistas from the island are fantastic. Obviously the locations were carefully selected, but Franco Di Giacomo‘s lensing could not have been more effective.

The light and very elegant music score was created by the legendary Bulgarian-Argentine-Italian composer Luis Bakalov, who won an Academy Award for it in 1994.

Il Postino Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Presented in an aspect ratio of 1.67:1, encoded with MPEG-4 AVC and granted a 1080p transfer, Michael Radford's Il Postino arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Warner Bros. Italia.

The film was apparently remastered for its 20th anniversary and the bulk of it looks quite good. The master that was used to produce this release, however, is an older one and it has some limitations. For example, depth and clarity are typically good, but during the darker footage shadow definition isn't overly convincing. As a result, some very light black crush can be spotted. Colors are stable and appear healthy, but can be better saturated; there should be a wider range of nuances as well. Grain is visible throughout the entire film, but some very light noise sneaks in and at times it affects depth. There are no traces of recent sharpening adjustments. Overall image stability is very good. Finally, there are no big damage marks, debris, cuts, stains, or torn frames to report in our review. All in all, there is clearly room for improvement, but the current technical presentation represents a very good upgrade in quality over the old R1 DVD release of the film. My score is 3.75/5.00. (Note: This is a Region-B "locked" Blu-ray release. Therefore, you must have a native Region-B or Region-Free player in order to access its content).

Il Postino Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

There is only standard audio track on this Blu-ray release: Italian LPCM 2.0 (a few bits of Spanish). Optional English and Italian SDH subtitles are provided for the main feature.

Depth and clarity are very pleasing. Luis Bacalov's score is also well balanced, though I suspect that if the audio is fully remastered in the future it would be slightly better rounded in select sequences. The dialog is always crisp and easy to follow. There are no audio dropouts or digital distortions to report in our review. The English translation is very good.

Il Postino Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailer - original trailer for Il Postino. In Italian, not subtitled. (2 min).

• Riprese Alternative - two extended scenes. In Italian, not subtitled. (3 min).

Il Postino Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Il Postino is one of the simplest and most beautiful romantic films you would ever see. It is probably the saddest one as well because it was Massimo Troisi's dream project and he passed away a day after the film was completed. This Blu-ray from Warner Bros. Italia is the only English-friendly release of the film on the market. I think that it is definitely worth picking up because the previous DVD releases have been quite problematic. RECOMMENDED.