Golden Parable

Nature is the greatest show on earth and in Golden Parable the harsh beauty of the Sicilian wheat harvest is subtly and strikingly captured by documentary filmmaker Vittorio DeSeta. Eschewing narration, dubbed sound or musical score, De Seta quietly and without fanfare creates a miniature cinematic masterpiece. Presenting film in its purest form in conveying its story without artifice it lulls the viewer into unconscious introspection with its simple telling. Beautifully photographed and deftly edited with ambient background audio it hypnotizes with its magnificent imagery plainly presented while the hard toil of the workers under the grueling sun evokes painterly grace.

A film Terrence Malik would expand on a couple of decades later (Days of Heaven) with a much larger budget and crew and more time...and almost as good. A compact work of art.