Strategia del ragno

A young man gradually discovers that an entire little world is caught in the threads from out of which it has been performatively and spectacularly woven, but where these threads (of stories, plots, lies, myths, beliefs, feelings and ideas) spiral forwards and backwards in time more than in space, and thus across the generations, to the point of putting his own existence into question. If anything, this is colder than THE CONFORMIST (1970), and, as a made-for-television movie, it lacks the latter’s obvious cinematic virtues (but possesses others), in a mystery that is lumbered with a protagonist-without-qualities. It is, therefore, a difficult film to love, but it is also, perhaps, more serious than Bertolucci’s more famous work of that year, and its multi-layered tapestry of intertwined connections to cinema, theatre, literature, painting and opera seems to command the viewer’s attention with an uncanny power that only intensifies in the aftermath of the experience.