The latest – and apparently last – film from the master of the ‘Tree of Wooden Clogs’. By JOE SHEPPARD.

ERMANNO OLMI poses some big existential questions in One Hundred Nails, an intellectual whodunnit that unravels into nostalgic musing on the idyllic Italian countryside. Like Shakespeare’s wizard Prospero, a dashing but disillusioned professorino dramatically abjures his books, hammering a huge, heavy nail through each ancient tome. Initially this symbolic and rather laborious gesture in the University of Bologna is interpreted as the ‘massacre’ of a fanatic psychopath – no less than an act of betrayal against the ‘faithful friends’ of the scholarly, nearly blind priest in residence there. Soon the police are onto our protagonist, and he abandons the comfortable life and worldly possessions of the urban academic for the rustic pleasures of a derelict cobblestone hut on the banks of the fertile river Po.

He soon finds that the pages of his thesis on ‘Dynamic and Methodical Thought’ blaze only briefly in the cold, blackened hearth of his new premises; it is the expertise and labour of his new-found friends that thatches the roof and installs doors and windows, providing more lasting warmth and hospitality. The professor is instantly welcomed by the villagers, who see in his long locks of hair, full beard and primitive wisdom the teachings of another Christ. Together the postman, the girl at the bakery, and the old fishermen and farmers supply everything he could possibly need: food, shelter and earnest friendship.

But life on the lam must come to an end, and Olmi highlights the theme of moral and social decay throughout – intrusive species choke up the river, the water is no longer as clean as it once was and the river rats are deemed to be illegal squatters by the body local council. It is impossible for this Jesus to be reborn and return to the values of kindness and thrift associated with the simple life.

One Hundred Nails is a lyrical celebration of nature and life. Would that we could all up sticks and chill out riverside in northern Italy for a summer! By turns witty, insightful and mystical, there are some golden quotes and plenty of mental nourishment to chew over long after the curtain has fallen. Olmi’s characters openly invite us to interpret each plot development as biblical allegory, but since the director himself has proclaimed this his final work, it is tempting – if a little romantic or bold – to interpret the protagonist’s renunciation of scholarship as a kind of grandiose and autobiographical statement from a retiring ‘Master’. In which case, may he enjoy many years of bucolic happiness.