|
Christopher Nolan (1970)
Following (1999)
is a black and white thriller that plays with the narrative structure.
The characters and the setting are mere pretexts to unleash Nolan's
revolutionary concept of narrative.
Somebody, wearing white gloves, is browsing through the objects of a shoebox.
The protagonist is talking to somebody about his hobby: he follows people.
At the beginning he was following random
people, then he started selecting people. That is when his troubles began.
He waits outside a girl's apartment and holds pictures of her.
The girl walks into a bar.
Next, he is lying on the floor, badly beaten, bleeding and coughing.
Next, he is typing frantically on his typewriter.
Bill fancies himself as a writer.
One of his "victims" noticed that he was following him and approached him in
a restaurant. As Bill confessed his morbid obsession, the man introduced himself
as a professional burglar, a man who breaks into apartments and studies
his victims' lives: a philosophizing burglar.
Bill follows him into an apartment. They are surprised by the tenants, but
the burglar figures that the woman is having an affair, as the man she walked
in with is not the one she lives with. They leave undisturbed.
Bill meets the girl in a bar (the girl he has been following).
She's very upfront: he can buy her a drink but
she will not sleep with him. Not because she doesn't like him, but because
her boyfriend is dangerous. Nonetheless, they meet outside and
he takes her to his apartment. She tells him how she has just been burglarized.
Bill, his face badly beaten up, calls a friend about learning self-defense
techniques.
Bill (face ok) goes along on a second burglary. This time the burglar, after figuring
out the humble life of the owners, refuses to steal anything.
Bill visits the girl in her apartment. She describes how
the burglars went through her underwear and took one earring.
Next, his face is scarred again and he is getting ready for a burglary.
The third burglary (face ok) with the partner/master is in the girl's apartment:
the burglar goes through her underwear and misplaces one of her earrings.
Bill pockets a pictures of her.
Bill (face ok) meets the girl at the bar.
She's afraid of her boyfriend because
she saw him smash the skull of someone who owed him money.
Bill pays with a credit card.
His face is scarred and he is walking in the dark in the deserted bar. He
has the combination of the safe and opens it.
A flashback shows him finishing up lunch with the burglar at the restaurant.
The burglar hands him a credit card that he has just stolen and invites Bill
to pay with it.
Unscarred face, he is typing. He cuts his hair to make sure he cannot be
identified.
Bill browses through the loot taken from the girl's apartment,
counts money and checks objects. Then calls burglar, who happens to be
in bed with that very girl. They make fun of him.
Back to the solo burglary in the bar, Bill is taping money all around
his body because he forgot to carry a bag. He is
surprised by someone and hits him with a hammer crashing his skull.
Bill takes the envelop and runs.
Unscarred, Bill goes to apologized at the girl's place:
confesses that he has been writing about burglars and going along with a
burglar's plans.
She tells him that her boyfriend is blackmailing her because of some pictures
that are kept in the safe of the bar.
She knows the combination of the safe and
he volunteers to break into his office and take them.
She makes him promise that he will not open the envelop.
Unscarred, Bill walks with a bag to a meeting with the burglar on the roof of
a building. Bill offers the burglar the job at the club and
explains that he is seeing the girl. The burglar gets mad at him and hits him.
That's how Bill got his bruises.
As Bill is lying down on the floor, the burglar stuffs a napkin into his mouth.
Bill goes back home and types something.
The burglar goes back to the girl and they discuss how he beat an
old lady to death and they are now trying to frame Bill for that murder.
Bill is back in his apartment after the burglary at the bar. He is
taking the money off his body. He can't resist and opens the envelop.
Inside he finds pictures of another woman. Bill, furious, rushes to the girl's
apartment and yells at her. She confesses that she used him as a decoy,
supposed to be caught right-handed while burglarizing that bar,
so the police would suspect him instead of his friend the burglar.
It was the burglar who followed Bill from the beginning (not viceversa, as
Bill believed) and did so because Bill was the perfect idiot to fall in their
trap.
Bill finishes his story to the police detective who has been listening to it.
The detective lets him finish and then reveals that there is no unsolved murder
of old ladies and that the burglar was never a suspect of anything.
They invented everything, but Bill now has no way to corroborate his story.
Everything he told the police sounds like the work of a sick mind. The only
facts are that he did kill a man in the bar and that...
The burglar and the girl are congratulating each other for the success of their
operation, but the burglar has a surprise for the girl: their boss has ordered
him to kill her, as she is a dangerous witness, and he kills her with the
same hammer that Bill has just used in the burglary.
The police detective tells Bill that the girl was found dead and that they
found her blood on his hammer. The detective suspects that Bill
tortured her to get the combination.
The police have found her shoebox under his bed, with photographs of her,
missing earring, and the stolen credit card.
Everything proves that Bill murdered the girl.
One has to sequence the scenes in the right order to reconstruct what
happened: Bill started following people; the burglar managed to become his
next victim and to get him to follow the girl; the girl talked Bill into
burglarizing the club; Bill burglarized the club and then realized he had
been fooled; Bill went to the police to confess everything but in the meantime
the burglar had killed the girl and the police had found the hammer.
|
(Translation by/ Tradotto da xxx) Se sei interessato a tradurre questo pezzo, contattami
|
|
Memento (2001) is a paranoid essay on Nolan's favorite topic (memory
and the illusion of memory) and a revolutionary approach to the timeline
(the movie plays the story backwards).
In cinema's continuous quest for new ways of telling a story - a quest that
started with Griffith and Ejzenstein and went through the "Welles-ian"
revolution - Nolan's Memento stands with
Egoyan's Exotica, Tarantino's Pulp Fiction
and Figgis' Time Code as one of the most significant films
of the turn of the century.
Since the protagonist has no short-term memory (does not remember recent
events, things that just happened to him), telling the story backwards,
as a sequence of short segments, each of which starts where the following one
will end, is a way to get into the protagonist's shoes: each segment is
a blind search for a reason.
Each scene explains the previous scene. This "explanation" is embodied by
the protagonist in "cues" that he leaves behind to make sure that his next
reincarnation will find them
(the Polaroid snapshots, the notes stuck against the wall or
left in the pocket of the jacket, even tattoes on his body).
By using "cues", the protagonist and the viewer can make sense of what is
happening.
Those "cues" create a bridge between past and presents.
Those cues are a vivisection of memory, whereby the continuous
flow of time is reduced to discreet segments. Causality works as usual
within each segment, but it takes the cues to impose causality over the
whole set of segments. Memory forces causality on events.
Those "cued" are also his identity. His identity is tattoed on his body,
is annotated on his photographs, is pasted to the map he hung on his bed.
Identity is another theme of the film.
Every day, when he wakes up, the protagonist has to recreate his life and
his purpose in life: who he is and why he is doing what he is doing.
It's like a computer that reloads its memory every time it reboots.
Ultimately, the protagonist is just a machine programmed by all those cues,
except that he wrote the instructions for his own program.
As the film progresses, we also start seeing these "cues" as theorems that
the protagonist has proven. As he proves theorems and establishes truths,
he records them in those cues.
So the film is also a subtle exercise in mathematical logic.
This is the only way that the protagonist can assess whether a statement
is true or false: by using the statements previously proven to be true
(the "facts"). The problem is that one wrong assumption can screw up the
entire castle of deductions. And that's precisely what happens.
(Plus, in this case it is the mathematician who deliberately inserts a false
statement into the formal system in order to cause a wrong deduction).
Also, the system lends itself to manipulation. If someone alters one of
the truths, the subsequent deductions will also be screwed up.
(The protagonist thinks that he knows what he is doing, but he actually
only knows what is written on his notes, and he does not remember why
he wrote what he wrote. In fact it will turn out that one note is plainly
fabricated and one very important note he could not write down because
he could not find a pen in time).
The main appeal of the film is therefore its structure, its way of telling
the story. But a parallel thread, shot in black and white, a sequence of
phone calls between the protagonist and an invisible caller, give the puzzle
(and the protagonist's life) a meaning.
During these phone calls, we learn of another story, the story of another
protagonist, Sammy Jankis, that first seems to merely provide scientific
ground for the protagonist's disease but then takes over the main story
and becomes the whole reason of the protagonist's actions.
Only halfway through the film one starts realizing that, after all, this
is just a detective film, albeit a very skewed one
(nearest comparison would be Boorman's Point Blank).
Then towards the end it becomes a bit of a Hitchcock thriller.
At the same time, the director never loses his sense of humour, and often
makes fun of Lenny's memory loss. A few scenes lend themselves to comic
situations.
A man is staring at the Polaroid snapshot of a bloody scene: somebody has been
murdered and the walls are stained with blood.
Lenny leaves his motel room and meets Teddy, who claims to be a good friend of
his and who has come to pick him up.
Together, they drive to an abandoned building, a pick-up truck parked
in the front. Lenny finds bullets in the pick-up truck.
They enter the building, Lenny finds a note to kill Teddy and coldly executes
him, while Teddy tries in vain to convince him that someone set him (Lenny) up
to kill the wrong man, and that the revealing truth lies in the basement.
Then Lenny takes a Polaroid snapshot of the corpse, the snapshot we saw in
the first scene.
In black and white, we see Lenny in a motel room talking into the phone to
someone about his mental disease.
Lenny has a picture of Teddy in his pocket and writes on it a note to kill him.
He meets Teddy in the lobby and leaves the motel with him.
In black and white again, Lenny is talking over the phone about the case of
a man named Sammy Jankis who had lost short-term memory just like him.
It is even tattoed on his hands: "remember Sammy".
Lenny arrives at the motel and opens an envolope from Natalie. Inside the
envelope there is a photocopy of Teddy's driver license, except that Teddy's
real name is John G. Lenny was looking for a John G and had a plate number
to track him down, and Natalie helped him find out the owner of that plate
number who happens to be the very John G he was looking for.
A tattoo on his body reads "John G raped and murdered my wife".
After the first few scenes, the mechanism is clear: 1. Leonard Shelby has lost
short-term memory in an "incident" following the rape and murder of his wife
and he is now after the killer; 2. Since the incident, Lenny (as he hates to
be called) does not remember anything for more than a few seconds;
3. Lenny has replaced his short-term memory with a cunning set of tools,
including annotated Polaroid snapshots, notes left in places where he will
certainly find them, and tattoes spread all over his body;
4. Each scene explains the previous one;
5. Lenny spends hours talking about Sammy on the phone in a different timeframe.
Lenny meets Natalie in a restaurant (initially, of course, he does not
recognize her), whose face has been badly beaten.
She gives him the envelope that he will open at the motel. Apparently,
he asked her to track down a plate number for his, in return for another favor.
In the meantime, through the black and white phone conversation, we learn that
Lenny was an insurance detective in charge of finding out if Sammy was faking
his mental disease. Lenny met Sammy and his wife, decent folks who truly
loved each other. Sammy had exactly the same mental disease that now Lenny has.
Teddy jumps on the hood of Lenny's car and buys him lunch. Teddy thinks that
Lenny is being set up by someone to kill the wrong person.
In all of his dealings with Teddy, Lenny is guided by a note that says
"Do not believe his lies". Whatever Teddy tells him, it is automatically
deleted by that note.
Then Lenny goes to the appointment with Natalie.
Lenny wakes up in a room next to Natalie. They talk of John G and
the plate number. Then Lenny gets in his car and Teddy jumps on the hood.
Lenny has a picture of Dodd. Natalie tells him he is the man who beat her.
Her boyfriend, Jimmy, disappeared and she is afraid he has been killed.
Lenny and Natalie make love.
Lenny wakes up in a room and finds a man tied and gagged in the closet.
And Teddy is at the door, claiming he, Lenny, called him for help.
The man in the closet is Dodd. Naturally, Lenny does not remember hitting him,
but finds a note about Natalie.
Lenny drives to Natalie's home with a picture of Dodd.
Lenny is in a bathroom with a bottle in his hands and can't remember why.
He decides to take a shower but he is interrupted by somebody: it is Dodd,
who just entered his own room, where Lenny was apparently waiting for him.
The two fight and eventually Lenny ties Dodd, dumps him in the closet and
takes a Polaroid of him.
Then, panicking, he calls Teddy for help.
Lenny is attacked by a stranger (Dodd) who tries to kill him.
Lenny reads a note from Natalie with Dodd's address, enters his apartment,
grabs a bottle as a weapon and hides in the bathroom.
Late at night, Lenny burns memorabilia of his wife.
During the black and white conversations we learn that Lenny is after the
killers of his wife. He covets the police record, although some pages are
missing.
Lenny wakes up and finds a prostitute in the bathroom. Then he decides to
burn all of his wife's memorabilia.
Lenny takes a room at the motel and takes a picture of the motel sign so
he does not forget where he lives.
Lenny hangs a map on the wall and sticks pictures of all the reference points
to the map.
Then he calls a number and orders a prostitute. He asks the prostitute to
act like she was his wife and lie next to him until he falls asleep.
Teddy tells him that he should not trust Natalie and that her boyfriend is
a drug dealer.
But Lenny's note tells him not to believe Teddy's lies.
Teddy gives him the address of the motel, where he would be safe.
During a black and white sequence, Lenny is talking into the phone to the
stranger but suddenly realizes that he has a tattoo that reads "Never answer
the phone".
Lenny is at Natalie's place and forgot what he wanted to write down.
Natalie enters and says she was beaten by Dodd, a drug dealer.
When Lenny leaves her home, determined to avenge her, he finds Teddy
in his car.
The phone is ringing but Lenny does not pick up.
Natalie and Lenny have an argument. Natalie mentions that Jimmy had an
appointment with Teddy and that Teddy was supposed to give him money,
but then disappeared, but Natalie owes Dodd that money, so Natalie asks
Lenny to kill Dodd. Natalie hates him, curses him and insults his wife.
Natalie makes fun of his disease. Natalie tells him straight in the face
that she plans to take advantage of it and use him for her own goals.
She can tell him anything she likes because he will forget right away.
Lenny is shocked and hits her in the face. Natalie leaves the house.
Lenny would like to make a note that Natalie hates him but can't find a pen.
Natalie walks back in and he has already forgotten what happened.
In black and white: the front desk tells him that a cop called for him.
Now Lenny does not want to answer any call.
Natalie takes him to her place. Lenny tells her the story of his incident.
He woke up in the middle of the night, heard noise in the bathroom,
found a masked man who just raped and killed his wife and was hit by
another man whom Lenny did not see. Before leaving, the two criminals
changed the scene to incriminate him. The police
therefore suspected him of the murder and never looked for the real killers.
When he woke up, he had brain damage and eventually realized that he had lost
short-term memory.
From the police report, though, Lenny became conviced that the killers were
involved in drugs and had stolen a car. And set out to find them on his own.
In black and white, someone slips a note under Lenny's door: it contains a
picture of Lenny and begs him to pick up the phone. The phone rings and
Lenny picks up the phone.
Natalie is a bartender who is shocked when she sees Lenny enter the bar in
"those clothes" and with "that car". Lenny, of course, has no idea whether
they met before. She tells him she heard of him from her boyfriend Jimmy
and from a cop who was looking for him.
She takes him home.
In black and white, Lenny reveals what happened to the sweet couple he
was investigating. All the tests proved that Sammy was not faking his
illness. But Lenny managed to prove that this was a mental illness, not
a physical one, and therefore the insurance company did not have to pay.
Sammy's wife still wanted to know for sure if her husband was faking it
and tested him: every five minutes she asked him to give her insuline shots,
knowing that too many doses would have killed her. Each time he obeyed smiling.
She died. Sammy ended up in a hospital for the mentally ill.
In a tattoo shop, Lenny is getting a new "fact" tattoed on his body. Teddy,
who keeps following him (never recognized by Lenny) warns him against a bad
cop who is using him. Lenny trusts his note not to believe his lies.
Then Lenny drives to Natalie's bar because he found
a note to meet her at the bar.
The front desk rings up and tells Lenny that a cop is in the lobby for him.
Lenny finds Teddy and walks out with him.
Teddy tells Lenny that
Jimmy is the drug dealer, the John G, that Lenny has been after all this time.
And tells him where to find Jimmy.
Lenny drives to the abandoned building on a pick-up truck.
When Jimmy arrives with the money, thinking
of meeting Teddy with the drug, Lenny first takes his clothes then kills him
and dumps the body in the basement.
But then, when Teddy shows up, Lenny starts realizing that Teddy may have used
him to get the money.
They argue. Teddy reveals to be a real cop, just a little corrupt. He wants
to share the drug money with Lenny.
When Lenny refuses his offers, Teddy tells him that he is living a delusion,
that he, Teddy, is the one who listens to his story of Sammy, and he, Teddy,
is the police officer who investigated the case, and he knows that Sammy
was not married, that Lenny's wife was the one suffering from diabetes, that
she survived the rape, that she killed herself because she was fed up of him,
that Lenny has been mixing up the facts. Worse: Lenny
has already killed the men who raped his wife, he just doesn't remember it.
So Teddy has used him to kill another bad guy whose name happened to be John G.
There are many John G's: he himself, Teddy, has a real name that reads "John G".
Lenny, now dressed like Jimmy, leaves under shock, unloads his gun in the
pick-up truck, then takes Jimmy's car and drives away.
His delusion has been revealed, but Lenny refuses to give it up: he needs
his reality, he needs to continue his search for the killers.
He hates Teddy who is trying to open his eyes.
So he stops and writes down Teddy's plate number as the car that he is
supposed to chase. And the words "Don't believe his lies" on
the picture of Teddy. This way he has set in motion a time bomb for Teddy.
Then he drives away and stops in front of the nearest tattoo parlor.
(Note that the next to the last scene, a flashback in which he is in bed with
his wife, shows "I've Done It" written on Leonard's chest.
In a previous scene, Leonard told Natalie that he will tattoo
"I've Done It" after he finds John G).
There is no moral, other than, maybe,
Lenny's disease could be the consequence (and divine punishment) of having
destroyed Sammy's life for the sake of greed.
Lenny is revealed to be a crazy man who has invented the crime that he wants
to revenge. He is only interested in creating a reality and a purpose for
himself. No matter what. Ironically, Natalie and Teddy used him for "their"
purposes. Lenny's only revenge is to make Teddy the target of his next quest for
blood.
The inconsistencies are hard to reconcile, though: 1. Sammy's wife dies of
insuline overdose, but how do we know what happened if Sammy has no short-memory
and the woman is dead? 2. Natalie sets Lenny up to kill Teddy but how does she
know that Teddy is responsible for the death of her boyfriend and what justifies
such a strong hate for Teddy with no hard evidence that he is in any way involved?
|
(Translation by/ Tradotto da
Valentina Filippis)
Memento (2001) è un saggio paranoico sulla tematica preferita
di Nolan (la memoria e l’illusione della memoria) e un approccio rivoluzionario
al flusso del tempo (il film presenta la storia in senso inverso). Nella
continua ricerca del cinema di nuovi modi per raccontare una storia (ricerca
che è iniziata con Griffith ed Ejzenstein ed ha attraversato la
rivoluzione wellesiana),
Memento è, insieme ad Exotica
di Egoyan, Pulp Fiction di Tarantino e Time Code di Figgis, uno dei film
più significativi al cavallo dei secoli. Poiché
il protagonista non possiede memoria a breve termine (non ricorda gli avvenimenti
recenti, le cose che gli sono appena accadute), raccontare la storia al
contrario, come un susseguirsi di corti spezzoni - ognuno dei quali inizia
dove finirà il seguente - è un modo per mettersi nei panni
nel protagonista: ogni spezzone è una vana ricerca di senso. Ogni
scena spiega la precedente. Questa “spiegazione” si concretizza in alcuni
indizi che il protagonista lascia per essere sicuro di ritrovarli nella
sequenza successiva (le istantanee di Polaroid, gli appunti affissi al
muro o lasciati nella tasca della giacca, perfino tatuaggi impressi sul
corpo). Utilizzando queste “imbeccate”, il protagonista e lo spettatore
possono trovare il senso di quanto sta accadendo. Quegli indizi creano
un ponte tra il passato e il presente. Quegli indizi sono una scomposizione
della memoria, per mezzo della quale il continuo scorrere del tempo è
ridotto a segmenti discreti. La causalità è presente in ogni
singolo segmento, ma è compito degli indizi estenderla alla totalità
dei segmenti. La memoria rende predominante la causalità all’interno
degli eventi.
Quegli indizi riguardano anche l’identità del protagonista,
identità che è tatuata sul suo corpo, annotata sulle fotografie,
affissa alla mappa appesa dietro al suo letto. L'identità
è un’altra tematica del film. Ogni giorno, quando si alza, il protagonista
deve ricreare la propria vita e il proprio obiettivo: chi è e perché
sta facendo quello che sta facendo. E` come un computer che carica la sua
memoria ogni volta che si riavvia. Il protagonista è fondamentalmente
una macchina programmata da tutti quegli indizi, l'unica differenza è
che è lui stesso a scrivere le istruzioni del programma.
Con il procedere del film, iniziamo a vedere questi indizi come teoremi
che il protagonista ha verificato; man mano che ne prova la veridicità
e stabilisce delle verità, li annovera tra i suoi “segni”. Così
il film è anche un ingegnoso esercizio di logica. L’unico modo in
cui il protagonista può valutare se un’asserzione è vera
o falsa, è utilizzare quelle precedentemente verificate (i "fatti").
Il problema è che una supposizione sbagliata può far crollare
l'intero castello di deduzioni; ed è precisamente quello che accade.
(C'è da aggiungere che in questo caso è il matematico stesso
che inserisce deliberatamente una falsa attestazione all'interno del sistema
formale, così da causare una deduzione sbagliata).
Inoltre il sistema stesso tende ad essere alterato; se qualcuno modifica
una delle verità, le seguenti deduzioni saranno a loro volta contraffatte.
(Il protagonista pensa di sapere ciò che sta facendo, ma in fin
dei conti conosce solo quanto è scritto sui suoi appunti, e non
si ricorda il perché abbia scritto quelle cose. Infatti accadrà
che un’annotazione è completamente inventata, ed una molto importante
non potrà essere trascritta perché non riesce a trovare una
penna in tempo). La principale attrattiva del film è perciò
la sua struttura, il suo modo di narrare la storia. Ma una trama parallela
girata in bianco e nero, una sequenza di telefonate tra il protagonista
e un invisibile interlocutore, dà un senso al puzzle (e alla vita
del protagonista). Durante queste telefonate veniamo a conoscenza di un’altra
storia, quella di un altro personaggio - Sammy Jankis – che all’inizio
sembra fornire unicamente una base scientifica al disturbo del protagonista,
ma alla fine prende il posto della storia principale e diventa l’unica
ragione delle azioni del protagonista.
Solo a metà del film s'inizia a capire che, dopotutto, questo
è un film poliziesco, sebbene anomalo (il paragone più azzeccato
sarebbe Point Black di Boorman). Poi, verso la fine, diventa simile ad
un thriller di Hitchcock. Allo stesso tempo, il regista non perde mai il
senso dello humour, e spesso crea episodi divertenti a partire dalla perdita
di memoria di Lenny. Alcune scene si prestano loro stesse a situazioni
comiche.
Un uomo osserva un'istantanea della scena di un delitto: qualcuno è
stato ucciso e le pareti sono coperte di sangue. Lenny esce dalla sua stanza
del motel e incontra Teddy, il quale sostiene di essere un suo buon amico
e di essere venuto a prenderlo. Insieme, si dirigono in auto verso un edificio
abbandonato, fuori dal quale è parcheggiato un furgoncino. Lenny
trova dei proiettili nella cabina guida di questo. Entrano nell'edificio,
Lenny trova un appunto che dice di uccidere Teddy e lo elimina a sangue
freddo, mentre quest'ultimo cerca invano di convincerlo che qualcuno sta
tentando di fargli uccidere l’uomo sbagliato, e che la prova si trova nel
seminterrato. Lenny prende un’istantanea del cadavere, la foto che abbiamo
visto nella prima scena. In bianco e nero, vediamo Lenny in una stanza
di motel che sta parlando al telefono con qualcuno del suo disturbo mentale.
Lenny ha una foto di Teddy in tasca e scrive su di essa un appunto: ucciderlo.
Incontra Teddy all’ingresso ed esce dal motel con lui. Ancora in bianco
e nero, Lenny sta discutendo al telefono del caso di un uomo di nome Sammy
Jankins, che aveva perso la memoria a breve termine, proprio come lui.
E’ tatuato anche sulle mani: “Ricordati di Sammy”. Lenny arriva al motel
e apre una busta da parte di Natalie; dentro la busta c’è una fotocopia
della patente di Teddy, a parte il fatto che il vero nome di Teddy è
John G. Lenny stava cercando un John G, aveva un numero di targa per rintracciarlo,
e Natalie lo ha aiutato a trovare il proprietario di quel numero di targa,
che si rivela essere il vero John G che egli stava cercando. Un tatuaggio
sul suo corpo dice “John G ha violentato e ucciso mia moglie”. Dopo le
prime scene, il meccanismo è chiaro: 1. Leonard Shelby ha perso
la memoria a breve termine in un incidente seguito allo stupro e all'uccisione
di sua moglie, e ora è sulle tracce del killer; 2. Dall'incidente,
Lenny (che odia essere chiamato così) non si ricorda nulla per un
tempo superiore a qualche secondo; 3. Lenny ha sostituito la sua memoria
a breve termine con un astuto set di strumenti, tra i quali istantanee
di polaroid con annotazioni, appunti lasciati in luoghi nei quali li ritroverà
sicuramente, e tatuaggi disseminati sul suo corpo; 4. Ogni scena spiega
la precedente; 5. Lenny passa ore intere a parlare di Sammy al telefono,
in scene differenti.
Lenny incontra Natalie in un ristorante (all’inizio, ovviamente, non
la riconosce), e il volto di lei mostra i segni di un pestaggio. Lei gli
porge la busta che lui aprirà al motel. Apparentemente, lui le chiede
di ricercare un numero di targa, in cambio di un altro favore. Nel frattempo,
attraverso una scena in bianco e nero di una conversazione telefonica,
veniamo a sapere che Lenny era un assicuratore, e aveva il compito di provare
che il disturbo mentale di Sammy non era altro che un’invenzione. Lenny
incontra Sammy e sua moglie, persone modeste che si amano profondamente.
Sammy aveva esattamente lo stesso disturbo che ora ha Lenny.
Teddy salta sul cofano dell’auto di Lenny e gli compra del cibo. Teddy
pensa che qualcuno stia portando Lenny ad uccidere la persona sbagliata.
Il modo di agire di Lenny nei confronti di Teddy è guidato da un
appunto che dice “Non ascoltare le sue bugie”; qualsiasi cosa Teddy gli
dica, esso viene immediatamente annullato da quell’avvertimento. In seguito
Lenny si reca all’appuntamento con Natalie. Lenny si sveglia in una stanza
accanto a Natalie. Parlano di John G e del numero di targa; quindi Lenny
sale in macchina e Teddy gli salta sul cofano. Lenny ha una foto di Dodd.
Natalie gli dice che è l’uomo che la ha picchiata. Il suo fidanzato,
Jimmy, è scomparso, e lei teme sia stato ucciso. Lenny e Natalie
fanno l’amore.
Lenny si sveglia in una stanza e trova un uomo nell’armadio, legato
ed imbavagliato. E Teddy è fuori dalla porta, sostenendo che Lenny
lo ha chiamato chiedendogli aiuto. L’uomo nell’armadio è Dodd. Ovviamente,
Lenny non ricorda di averlo picchiato, ma trova un appunto su Natalie.
Lenny si reca a casa di Natalie con una foto di Dodd.
Lenny è in un bagno con una bottiglia in mano, e non riesce
a ricordare il perché. Decide di fare una doccia, ma viene interrotto
da qualcuno: è Dodd, che è appena entrato nella sua stanza,
dove sembra che Lenny lo stesse aspettando. I due lottano e alla
fine Lenny lega Dodd, lo butta nell’armadio e gli fa una foto. Poi, in
preda al panico, Telefona a Teddy per chiedergli aiuto. Lenny viene assalito
da uno sconosciuto (Dodd), che tenta di ucciderlo. Lenny legge un appunto
di Natalie con l’indirizzo di Dodd, entra nel suo appartamento, impugna
la bottiglia come un’arma e si nasconde nel bagno. A notte fonda, Lenny
brucia degli oggetti appartenuti a sua moglie.
Tramite la conversazione in bianco e nero, scopriamo che Lenny è
sulle tracce dell’assassino di sua moglie. Desidera ardentemente i documenti
della polizia, sebbene manchino alcune pagine.
Lenny si sveglia e trova una prostituta nel bagno. Decide di bruciare
tutti gli oggetti appartenuti a sua moglie.
Lenny prende una camera al motel e fotografa l’insegna, per non dimenticarsi
dove vive. Appende una cartina al muro e vi affigge le foto di tutti i
punti di riferimento. Poi compone un numero di telefono e richiede una
prostituta; chiede alla donna di comportarsi come se fosse sua moglie e
di sdraiarsi al suo fianco fino a che lui non si addormenta.
Teddy gli dice che non dovrebbe fidarsi di Natalie e che il fidanzato
di lei è uno spacciatore di droga. Ma l’annotazione di Lenny gli
dice di non credere alle bugie di Teddy. Teddy gli dà l’indirizzo
del motel, dove sarebbe stato al sicuro.
In una delle sequenze in bianco e nero, Lenny sta parlando al telefono
con l’ignoto interlocutore, ma si accorge subito che ha un tatuaggio con
scritto: “Non rispondere mai al telefono”.
Lenny è a casa di Natalie e si è dimenticato cosa aveva
intenzione di scrivere. Natalie entra dicendo di essere stata picchiata
da Dodd, uno spacciatore. Quando Lenny lascia la casa di lei, determinato
a vendicarla, trova Teddy nella sua auto.
Il telefono sta squillando ma Lenny non risponde.
Natalie e Lenny litigano; lei dice che Jimmy aveva un appuntamento
con Teddy e che quest’ultimo doveva dargli del denaro, ma poi era Jimmy
era scomparso; Natalie deve a Dodd quel denaro, così chiede a Lenny
di ucciderlo. Natalie offende Lenny, lo maledice e insulta sua moglie.
Natalie gli dice esplicitamente che sta pensando di avvantaggiarsi della
situazione e di usarlo per i suoi scopi; può dirgli qualsiasi cosa
voglia, perché tanto lui si dimenticherà tutto. Lenny è
molto scosso e la colpisce. Natalie esce di casa. Lenny vorrebbe scrivere
che Natalie lo odia, ma non riesce a trovare una penna. Natalie rientra
e lui si è già dimenticato di quanto è successo.
In bianco e nero: il custode gli riferisce che un poliziotto ha telefonato
cercandolo. Lenny decide in questo momento di non rispondere a nessuna
telefonata.
Natalie lo porta a casa sua, dove Lenny le racconta del suo incidente:
si era svegliato nel corso della notte, aveva sentito un rumore proveniente
dal bagno, aveva trovato un uomo con il volto coperto che aveva appena
violentato e ucciso sua moglie, ed era stato colpito da un altro uomo,
che non aveva visto. Prima di andarsene, i due criminali avevano cambiato
gli elementi per incriminare Lenny; perciò la polizia aveva sospettato
di lui e non aveva mai cercato i veri colpevoli. Al suo risveglio, Lenny
accusava danni cerebrali e si era poi reso conto di avere perso la memoria
a breve termine. Ma, leggendo il verbale della polizia, Lenny si rende
conto che gli assassini avevano a che fare con lo spaccio di droga e avevano
rubato un auto. E decide di trovarli per conto suo.
In bianco e nero, qualcuno fa scivolare una busta sotto la porta di
Lenny: ci sono una sua foto e una scritta che lo supplica di rispondere
al telefono. Il telefono squilla e Lenny risponde.
Natalie, dietro al bancone del bar, rimane scioccata quando vede Lenny
entrare con “quei vestiti” e sceso da “quella macchina”. Lenny, ovviamente,
non ha la minima idea di dove si siano incontrati prima di allora. Lei
gli racconta di aver sentito parlare di lui dal suo fidanzato Jimmy e da
un poliziotto che lo stava cercando. Lei lo accompagna a casa.
In bianco e nero, Lenny rivela cosa era successo ai dolci coniugi sui
quali stava investigando: tutti i test eseguiti provavano che Sammy non
stava fingendo di essere malato. Ma Lenny era riuscito a dimostrare che
si trattava di una malattia mentale, e non fisica, e perciò la compagnia
assicurativa non era tenuta a pagare. La moglie di Sammy voleva avere la
certezza che il marito non stesse mentendo: così, ogni cinque minuti,
gli chiede di farle delle iniezioni di insulina, sapendo che troppe dosi
l’avrebbero uccisa. Ogni volta il marito obbedisce, sorridendo. Lei muore,
e lui viene ricoverato in un ospedale per malati mentali.
In un negozio di tatuaggi, Lenny si sta facendo tatuare un nuovo “fatto”.
Teddy, che continua a seguirlo (ma non viene mai riconosciuto da Lenny)
lo allerta nei confronti di un poliziotto che lo starebbe usando. Lenny
si fida della sua annotazione di non credere alle sue bugie. In seguito
Lenny si reca al bar di Natalie, in quanto aveva trovato un promemoria
dell’appuntamento.
Il portiere dell’albergo avvisa telefonicamente Lenny, dicendogli che
un poliziotto lo sta aspettando nella hall. Lenny incontra Teddy ed esce
con lui; Teddy gli riferisce che Jimmy è lo spacciatore, il John
G che Lenny aveva cercato per tutto questo tempo, e gli dice dove trovarlo.
Lenny si reca all’edificio abbandonato su un pick-up. Quando Jimmy arriva
con il denaro, pensando di trovare Teddy con la droga, Lenny gli sfila
gli abiti, lo uccide e si libera del cadavere gettandolo nel seminterrato.
Ma a quel punto, quando arriva Teddy, Lenny inizia a capire che quest’ultimo
potrebbe essersi servito di lui per impossessarsi del denaro. Litigano.
Teddy rivela di essere un vero poliziotto, solamente un po’ corrotto. Vuole
spartire il denaro della droga con Lenny; quando Lenny rifiuta la sua offerta,
il poliziotto gli dice che sta vivendo una realtà illusoria, che
è lui – Teddy – che ascolta la storia di Sammy al telefono, e lui
– Teddy – è il poliziotto che ha seguito le indagini, e sa che Sammy
non era sposato, che era la moglie di Lenny a soffrire di diabete, che
lei era sopravvissuta alla violenza, che lei si era suicidata perché
era stanca di lui, che Lenny stava confondendo i fatti. Come se non bastasse:
Lenny ha già ucciso l’uomo che ha violentato sua moglie, solo che
non se lo ricorda. Quindi Teddy si era servito di lui per uccidere un uomo
il cui nome era John G. Ci sono parecchi John G: anche lui, Teddy, in realtà
si chiama “John G”.
Lenny, con indosso gli abiti di Jimmy, si allontana scioccato, estrae
i proiettili dalla sua pistola, nel pick-up, infine prende l’auto di Jimmy
e se ne va; è chiaramente deluso, ma rifiuta di arrendersi: ha bisogno
della sua realtà, di continuare a cercare gli assassini. Odia Teddy,
il quale sta cercando di fargli aprire gli occhi. Così si ferma
e annota il numero di targa di Teddy, come fosse quella l’auto alla quale
ora deve dare la caccia. Scrive inoltre le parole “Non ascoltare le sue
bugie” sulla foto di Teddy. In questo modo ha innescato una bomba ad orologeria
per Teddy. Lenny parte e si ferma davanti al più vicino negozio
di tatuaggi.
(Da notare che la penultima scena, un flashback nel quale è
a letto con sua moglie, mostra la scritta “L’ho fatto” sul petto di Leonard.
In una scena precedente, Leonard aveva detto a Natalie che si sarebbe tatuato
“L’ho fatto” dopo aver trovato John G).
Non c’è nessuna morale oltre al fatto che, forse, il disturbo
di Lenny può essere la conseguenza (e la punizione divina) per aver
distrutto la vita di Sammy in nome del denaro.
Si scopre che Lenny è un pazzo che si è inventato il
crimine che vuole vendicare; il suo unico interesse è crearsi una
realtà ed uno scopo. Non importa altro. Ironicamente, Natalie e
Teddy lo hanno usato per i loro propositi. L’unica vendetta di Lenny è
rendere Teddy l’obiettivo della sua prossima caccia.
Tuttavia, risulta difficile spiegare alcune incoerenze: 1. La moglie
di Sammy muore per un’overdose di insulina, ma come facciamo a sapere quello
che è successo, dal momento che Sammy non ha ricordi a breve termine
e la moglie è morta? 2. Natalie spinge Lenny ad uccidere Teddy,
ma com’è venuta a sapere che è quest’ultimo il responsabile
della morte del fidanzato? E come si giustifica un tale odio nei confronti
di Teddy, dal momento che non ci sono prove concrete del fatto che lui
è in qualche modo coinvolto?
|
|
The Prestige (2006)
is a movie about magic that uses the full power of the
magic of movies.
It is also the epic story of two men who one-upped each
other to death, an odd form of duel.
The film contains three timelines: one (from the trial to
the hanging) set in the present, one (Rupert's journey to
Tesla's and the premiere of new trick) set in the near
past, and one (the long rivalry between the two young
magicians) set in the more distant past.
Cutter is the metaphysical deus ex machina.
Cutter (Michael Caine) is an old magician who explains the art to
a little girl (and to the audience of the film).
Alfred is convicted of killing his old friend Rupert after
Cutter refuses to testify at the trial, in order not to
disclose a valuable secret.
The attorney of a mysterious lord visits Alfred in jail and
offers money to purchase the secret of all his tricks.
Alfred refuses, even if this means that his daughter will
be at the mercy of the lord.
In the near past, Rupert, a crippled wealthy magician,
travels to the remote village where the mad inventor Tesla
has built his laboratory. Rupert, who has been reading
Alfred's encrypted diary, wants to purchase the invention
that Tesla has sold to Alfred.
Deeper in the past, Rupert and Alfred are shown as two
young assistants who are tired of the old tricks and set
out to create new ones.
Cutter sends them to watch a Chinese magician. They figure
out how he performs his tricks, but, most importantly, they
realize what it takes to become a great magician: a
lifetime sacrifice.
Rupert starts his show with help from Cutter and a beautiful
assistant, Juliet, who becomes his wife and gives his show
the name "Great Danton".
Alfred, on the other hand, meets Sarah while performing in
a humble establishment in front of few people.
Tragedy strikes when Juliet drowns to death, probaly
because Alfred did not tie her feet properly. This turns
the two friends into deadly enemies. Alfred and Sarah get a
married and have a baby (the child that Cutter was talking
to), while Rupert is condemned to live alone, despite
enjoying a greater professional success.
When Alfred tests a new dangerous trick in front of a rowdy
audience, Rupert, disguised as a spectator, volunteers to
help and causes an accident that cuts two fingers off
Alfred's hand.
When Cutter trains Rupert for a new trick, it is Alfred who
ruins it.
In the more recent past, Rupert reads Alfred's diary also
to find out if he caused Juliet's death on purpose or not.
It looks like Alfred honestly does not know.
Tesla finally accepts to build the mysterious machine that
will allow to perform the most amazing of all tricks.
(Both Alfred and Rupert had watched a demonstration of
Tesla's electrical wonders).
In the present, Alfred accepts the deal with the lord in
order to save his daughter. Alfred is visited and advised
by a mysterious man, who was also his main assistant.
In the distant past, Rupert sees Alfred perform a new trick
that consists in appearing in two places, something that
looks like real magic. The only way that Cutter is capable
of reproducing that trick is by hiring a double for Rupert
and train him to impersonate the magician. But Rupert is
dissatisfied that he cannot match his rival's trick without
cheating.
In the recent past, Rupert is invited to Tesla's lab to
view the first demonstration of the machine, but the test
is a failure. Subsequent tests also fail.
In the distant past, Alfred sends his gorgeous assistant
Olivia to steal Alfred's secret, but Olivia, disgusted of
being used like a spy despite her love for Alfred, decides
to join forces with Alfred. In fact, she soon becomes her
lover and tells him how Rupert had to hire a double.
Alfred bribes the double and humiliates Rupert on stage,
showing to the audience that he is the better magician (and
opening a show across the street), while causing an injury
to Rupert that makes him a cripple for the rest of his
life.
Olivia does steal Rupert's secret diary and hands him over
to Alfred. Then Rupert uses violence to obtain the key to
decode the encrypted diary.
That's how Rupert got the diary before starting his journey
for Tesla's.
Cutter decides not to follow him on that mad journey, afraid
of Rupert's obsession.
Alfred's wife Sarah, scared by his obsession, wants Alfred
to stop performing tricks.
Rupert keeps waiting for Tesla's invention, but it keeps
failing. Upon leaving the laboratory, however, Rupert
realizes that Tesla's invention has always worked: it was
supposed to transport a hat, and, while the hat never
moved, a whole bunch of hats are to be found outside the
lab. Tesla only has to perfect the invention so that the
original is desotryed. But the people of the village attack
the lab and destroy it. Rupert rescues the machine and
takes it back with him, determined to use it to beat
Alfred's legendary (and still unexplained) transporter
trick.
In the present, now it is Alfred who reads Rupert's diary
(in jail).
Sarah, fed up with Alfred, commits suicide.
Rupert, back in town with the transporter machine,
premieres the new trick. Alfred is among the audience that
is left speechless by the disappearance of Rupert and his
reappearance in another place.
Now it is Alfred who goes crazy trying to understand the
secret of Rupert's trick. Thus the next time Alfred is
among the spectators who volunteer to check the machine,
and then walks straight backstage to witness what happens.
Rupert falls from a trap door into a water tank... and
drowns under Alfred's eyes. Alfred tries in vain to save
him. Ironically Alfred is arrested (and later convicted)
for killing Rupert when in fact he tried to save him.
In the present the mysterious lord shows up at the jail
with Alfred's daughter in order to finalize their deal: it
turns out the mysterious lord is Rupert himself, alive and
well. Alfred is mystified that Rupert managed to stage the
ultimate trick: to resuscitate.
Alfred accepts to give him the secret of his trick, but
Rupert is no longer interested: he now is the better
magician. And he walks away with Alfred's daughter.
Even Cutter is puzzled how Rupert managed to resuscitate.
Alfred says goodbye to his partner.
Alfred is hanged. But minutes later he appears alive again
with a gun in his hand and shoots Rupert to death. Before
Rupert dies, Alfred explains that he had a twin brother.
The trick of transportation was actually quite simple: it
was two twins appearing in two different places. The one
who was hanged was his twin brother, who was also Olivia's
lover.
Rupert's secret was more gruesome: Tesla's machine allowed
him to reappear elsewhere, but at the price of creating a
clone. Thus the water tank was defective on purpose: every
everning Rupert killed himself. He drowned every single
night in order to perform the trick without creating
multiple copies of himself.
Alfred was no less determined to sacrifice his life for the
art: his brother had to cut two fingers in order to
impersonate him in the transporting trick.
Cutter delivers the daughter to Alfred (the first scene):
what reappears is what had disappeared, and in this case is
a father.
|
(Translation by/ Tradotto da xxx) Se sei interessato a tradurre questo pezzo, contattami
|
|
