First there was Pablo Neruda’s speech when he received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1971, quoting the “prophetic” Rimbaud: “In the dawn, armed with a burning patience, we shall enter the splendid cities.” Based on that, Antonio Skármeta wrote a script, directed it and then turned it into the successful novel Burning Patience. In 1994, Michael Radford directed Il Postino: The Postman, which would give the original book the new name of Il postino di Neruda. Almost three decades later, this new adaptation claims its original geographic and historical location and tinges itself with that unmistakable local flavor as it returns to its original title, thus reclaiming the political context of the text. It is the story of a young man in search of his destiny as well as a love story, that of a poet and his glory and that of a country in transition
