The Spider's Stratagem

pirateneckbeard4.5

Wow! This is just a big ball of mystery that is such an eye full of beautiful well crafted shots as it sways narratively with it's tracking camera and timeline hypnotically that entranced me with this unfolding mystery as a (mirror image of his father) son goes to find out who killed his father decades later. This thing much like Bernardo Bertolucci's "The Conformist" oozes beauty with how it looks and is stylized that alone is a reason to see it but as this story slowly parses out it's details of a town of just old people and children gives you valued clues of a gap that is missing after the death of fascism in Italy and where does the nations identity pick itself up again and try to irradicate a horrible past. I just lapped up this film and just found it a gripping story when it finally grasps hold on where it's going by the third and takes this vague construct and crystalizes the material into a whole but then gives you an ending that feels like it was all dust. What an amazing film that I have been wanting to see for so long and it did not let me down. Definitely worth getting caught in this web.

Filipe Furtado4.0

It is an extension/reversion of The Conformist with Bertolucci applying a much more confrontational modernist approach to a few of the same questions, which also mean a few of the results couldn’t be far apart. Borges story is used as basis for a playful take on a form of small town paranoia Italia cinema used a lot while dealing with the permanence of fascism shadows. Some great absurdist touches. Bertolucci filmmaking can be less spectacle oriented while equally impressive. It is a miniature version of some of his obsessions, but an exuberant one.

Paul Elliott4.0

There's an observable yearning for melodramatics in this Bernardo Bertolucci film which has the favourable consequences of combining elevated tragedy with some rather extravagant visuals. Based on a short story by Argentine novelist Jorge Luis Borges, it maintains a stunning cinematic elegance as it follows the central character, Athos Magnani, returning to the location where his father was murdered.However, his concerns are not for discovering the ones responsible for the death of his father; he's more contented to keep the truth buried in the past, even though his character is harrowingly craving some type of resolution. As a consequence, it's not precisely about an investigation for a killer, but willingly more an examination into the kind of people the characters perceive themselves to be, and who they are in the eyes of others. There's adventurous employment of camera movements and a broad lack of dialogue to set the beneficial atmosphere in this visually engaging tale which features some incredible colour cinematography from Franco Di Giacomo and Vittorio Storaro.