Those reviewers who were disappointed in this movie must be from another planet. What is not to like about this touching tale of the power of poetry and love? If you think this is somehow a political movie, you've missed the point entirely.

This movie boils down to how wonderful some communist are, and how bad most others are. If the people that made this c--p were proud of this film, they should have mentioned what it really was, in discriptions on line and on film cover. If you get all warm feeling thinking of stalin, you will love this movie.

Although this movie tracked a man who took a postal job, the movie also tracks are common preconceptions about poetry. After watching this movie, I can easily see why it won so many awards.

If this were merely a love story, it would have stopped a lot sooner. After taking a job as a postal delivery man, Mario meets, and later befriends, a famous poet who has moved to their small Italian town due to exile. Mario believes that poetry will win him a wife, so he solicits help from his new friend and woos Beatrice.

But Mario's story doesn't end for us here. The poet goes home, and people comment about how he seems to have forgotten them. The townspeople, especially Mario, are thinking new thoughts. They are questioning authority. This is where the director, and by extension the author, show us how poetry does more than woo women. Poetry has the power to move us, and this movie does a fine job of showing us that.

I would highly recommend watching this movie.

I bought the movie based on many good reviews on this site. Wow, what a mistake! The movie is extremely slow and the central character dull & boring. I've bought and enjoyed many foreign movies from Amazon (Belle Epoque, Malena, Life is beautiful among others); but do yourself a favor and stay away from this one...

I will never forget this beautiful, warmly humorous, sensuous and, ultimately, tragic cinematic masterpiece. "Il Postino" was my first introduction to Pablo Neruda, the poet who changed my life and first inspired my lifelong love of writing poetry. Though, I was an avid poet before, I owe a great thank you to the spirit of Pablo Neruda for bringing inspiration to my voice as a writer.

For starters, this film was masterfully directed, the cast couldn't be better, and it is definitely a great cross-over film that can be enjoyed by men, women, young people, old people, and even children. (Personally, I don't think anyone younger than thirteen should see this film.) It was, in fact, based on a novel of the same name (I much prefer the film to the novel, though---personal opinion.) . Mario Ruopollo (played by the late, great Massimo Troisi--who died twelve hours after the film was completed, is a fourty-year old postman in a sleepy fishing town in Italy. The shy man's life is centered around his job of delivering mail, until a chance encounter with the legendary, exiled Chilean poet , Pablo Neruda (Philip Noiret), changes his life forever. He finds himself learning about poetry what a metaphor ("metafore" in Italian) is. Of course, the learning curve is, at first, quite steep. Neruda asks Mario what he thinks of when he pictures the sea, and he says, "I feel seasick." Poetry takes front and center stage when Mario finds himself falling for Beatrice Russo (Maria Grazia Cucinotta), the most beautiful woman on the island. This is when the "Cyrano De Bergerac" element of the story begins, and Neruda becomes the written voice for Mario to win Beatrice's heart.

This film stirred me so much when I first saw it. I laughed, I pondered and I finally burst into tears. You will have to see it for yourself to understand the power of this film. I guarantee you will probably be looking up "Pablo Neruda" in a key word search when the film is long over. What a wonderful way to honor the man, his great body of work and how poetry touches the heart and soul.