11/28/2018

Bertolucci, the anti-fascist.

"The Conformist"
by Bernardo Bertolucci, Alberto Moravia, Vittorio Storaro

Bertolucci moved to another dimension.  Sadness.  His sensitivity, passion, and insights were way above the scale.  From my school days I remember excitement among fellow filmmaker students when his subsequent movies kept shaping our understanding of what's possible on screen.

Months ago I re-watched "The Conformist" and was impressed by its use of flashbacks.  (I wrote about it in a September post).  Most flicks fell apart moving back and forth in time.  This manouer ussually significe inability to sustain deep exploration of the main character.  "The Confromist" seems to me an example of how to move the story forward inserting parts of the hero's past into the narrative.  All for enlarging and exploring his character.  Very few movies achieve that without a cheap trick of flashbacks.  "Taxi Driver" comes to mind as an example of a profound psychological study that entirely happens in the now.

"The Conformist" is also a disturbing analysis of the lure of fascism, of the mechanism in which people are drown into the arms of a gigantic monster made out of collective weaknesses, unprocessed hurt and emotional and intellectual limitations.  The weak parts of ourselves (individually and collectively) extrapolate and return its collective power to the lost and confused individuals.   "The Conformist" shows the psychological attractivness of such a monster.   Today's relevance of this analysis cannot be ignored.

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