"O Lord, you have seduced me, and I was seduced." This, the central sentiment expressed by the Carthusian monks of the Grande Chartreuse monastery in "The Great Silence" (2005), was also how I felt on leaving "Le Quattro Volte" (2010).

As with "The Great Silence," one of the most striking features of "Le Quattro Volte" (The Four Times) is its lack of dialogue. However, whereas for some individuals the 169 minutes of near silence in "The Great Silence" was overly taxing, in this shorter, more widely focused film - quietly reflecting aspects of life in an isolated village in Calabria – the Milanese director Michelangelo Frammartino has given us a predominantly visual poem of place, of space, of people and of the passing of time.

Although not overly religious, it is a spiritually orientated film in which we are asked to consider Pythagoras' contention that we must each know ourselves four times due to the fact that we "have four lives within us - the mineral, the vegetable, the animal and the human".

Therefore within its 88 minute run the small number of central human characters that are featured within it are soon relegated to positions of equality, or of equal vulnerability, before nature. Thus, for example, the goat-herder's animals soon come to the forefront of the film, as do other elements of the animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms, in order to declare – seemingly – that these other realms also warrant serious and respectful consideration.

An extremely enjoyable and far-from-always-serious film, I found this a beautifully filmed, calming and thought-provoking movie.

I wanted to hate this film for one reason or the other. In the first 15 minutes or so I was angry at myself for watching it, but luckily I kept watching. Le quattro volte is simply about the cycle of life seen in close-mid shots and distant, long static shots of an idyllic provincial hamlet somewhere in the Italian mountains in the Calabria region. It is silent, mysterious and even awkward in moments but eventually the persistent poeticism and patience of the filmmaker taps into you, taps something eternal. It is exquisitely photographed by Andrea Locatelli and directed by Michelangelo Frammartino with such unyielding subtlety that even after the film has ended and the fugue wears off, you may be tempted to shrug it off as a nice little film that you will forget about in a days time, but the persistence of this film stays with you.

My score is more accurately a 7.8/10