Unraveling the Fascist Illusion in The Conformist
Bernardo Bertolucci’s Il Conformista tells the story of fascist spy named Marcello on an assassination mission, as memories from his past haunt him in the present. One of the film’s central ideas is Marcello’s faith in the image of fascist Rome. Bertolucci weakens this image through a distortion of time and space and powerful imagery
A Brief Defense of "Wuthering Heights"
Emerald Fennell said as much herself: "The thing for me is that you can't adapt a book as dense and complicated and difficult as this book. I can't say I'm making ‘Wuthering Heights.’ It's not possible. What I can say is I'm making a version of it." She put the title in quotation marks intentionally, providing a disclaimer that this film is not the classic text. Every adaptation imposes a vision, turning the source material into something else.
Nuremberg: Vanderbilt’s Political Mirror
The new movie Nuremberg attempts to convey the same message, albeit through a more character and relationship-driven lens. The overall theme, though, remains the same: Nazi’s aren’t some abstract villain–they are real, and they are human.
Kiss of the Spider Woman: A Meta-Musical That Strangles On Its Own Threads
For all its chaos, Kiss of the Spider Woman commits. Hard. Condon isn’t phoning it in, he’s trying to capture something much bigger than this movie can contain. It’s a movie about escaping, and even if the fantasy starts to collapse, I can still feel the ambition.