IL LAVORO DELLO SPETTATORE DI CINEMA
Poetica & Cristianesimo - Seminario
Permanente 2008
Giovedì 11 dicembre / 15:00 – 18:00 / Aula A.101
Film: The Spanish Prisoner (La formula), David Mamet, 1997.
Tema: Lo spettatore non è estraneo alle questioni che il film pone. Una storia consistente interpella chi la vede, portandolo a chiedersi: “ed io, cosa c’entro?”
Questioni da studiare: La ricezione cinematografica è sempre personale, ma non soggettiva.
Documentazione sul film:
-Variety: “The
picture embraces many of Mamet's themes”
David Mamet has a penchant for sleight-of-hand thrillers, and "The Spanish Prisoner" is his craftiest to date. Centered on a relentless cat's cradle of a business scam, the picture is a devilishly clever series of reversals that keeps you guessing to the very end. On target for specialized crowds, it has excellent crossover prospects, and the marquee cast should smooth the way for upbeat international playoff and strong ancillary action.
-Lars Lindhal (imbd): “Mamet's script is so
interesting because we know people don't actually talk like the characters in
the film”
I was originally going to give The Spanish Prisoner two and half stars. From my first viewing, I noticed that David Mamet's film was intense and clever at times but boring and cliched at other times especially at the beginning. From my second viewing however, I noticed that Mamet's script was actually a masterpiece. The Spanish Prisoner, like The Usual Suspects or Chinatown, begs for the viewer's complete attention. Miss a scene or even a small detail, and you could miss the meaning of the entire film. Also like the aforementioned films, it rewards its viewer for paying attention by delivering a surprising and memorable ending. Mamet is success doing again what he once tackled in 1987 when he wrote and directed House of Games. Like his past gem, The Spanish Prisoner fools the audience as much (or even more) than the victim. Because we were deceived just like the victim, we feel a strong attachment to the main character and consequently are more interested in the film. Mamet has the talent of not completely ending a film gift wrapped, but rather leaving some ambiguity towards the end. The power that he has in forcing the viewer to determine who the good guys and bad guys are once the film is over, without giving a right answer, is unique and ingenious. The Spanish Prisoner will leave you seriously puzzled and intrigued. After seeing the film again, I noticed that the details Mamet uses are so incredibly accurate it is frightening. His direction is very subtle; as he leaves so many clues explaining what is going on and who is who but it is still very difficult to tell what exactly is happening even if you see all of them, or think you see all of them.
-New York Times: “This
film’s characters remain wonderfully inscrutable”
An airport-security X-ray scans packages at the start of ''The Spanish Prisoner,'' revealing the inner workings behind tame-looking exteriors. If only such a device could read the conniving minds at work in this, David Mamet's craftiest and most satisfying cinematic puzzle. But no: this film's characters remain wonderfully inscrutable, speaking in the clipped vernacular of Mametese even when merrily taunting the audience. ''Who in this world,'' ask several of the film's carefully artificial characters, ''is what they seem?''
Hardly anybody here, that's for sure. And there's the fun in this elegant, entertaining mystery, which would deserve to be called ''House of Games'' if Mr. Mamet had not already put that title to good use. The film's secret is not that its characters are schemers, but the precise nature of the trickery that is set in motion. (The title refers to a venerable multistage con game.) And Mr. Mamet, the film's writer and director, knows how to keep that information just out of reach until the final frame.
-James Berardinelli: “The Spanish Prisoner is for anyone who likes to think and feel along with
the characters”
Mamet's script supplies us with a seemingly-endless series of twists and turns, only a fraction of which are predictable. At times, the audience is a step ahead of the screenplay, but, most of the time, we're playing catch-up. Although there are plenty of holes that Mamet has no interest is sewing up (trying to solve every riddle in The Spanish Prisoner is an exercise in futility), this is a smart film that develops a central character we can sympathize with – a modern version of Josef K. from Kafka's The Trial. The plot is delightfully preposterous, but holds together a lot better than the generic likes of Palmetto and Wild Things. The difference is simple: those two films are for viewers who prefer to turn their brains off while The Spanish Prisoner is for anyone who likes to think and feel along with the characters. Mamet offers us the same clues he gives to Joe; we can piece the truth together along with him.
The most curious thing about The Spanish Prisoner is the ending (which I will not reveal in this review). At first glance, it appears to be a common wrap-up that ties together several critical loose ends. There's a deus ex machina aspect to it which may indicate that Mamet is toying with the audience by sending up the manner in which this kind of movie must end to satisfy an audience. But are things as straightforward as they seem? Is this, in fact, the end, or is it just the latest twist in an incredibly complex con game?
-Andrew Sarris: “There is hardly anyone in the world
he can trust”
David Mamet's The Spanish Prisoner has been described by the writer-director himself as "a light thriller-almost a romantic thriller. And a little Hitchcockian." The operative words are "almost" and "little." Indeed, I don't think there's a romantic bone in Mr. Mamet's body, and he bears very, very little resemblance either thematically or stylistically to Master Alfred. Hitchcock always played with his cards face up, preferring suspense to surprise. By contrast, Mr. Mamet performs tricks with variations of male stud poker.
Yet, I liked The Spanish Prisoner because its very lightness in Mr. Mamet's mind as a minor genre entertainment enabled him to escape the pomposity and pretentiousness of recent Mamet movies and plays in which his cryptic phrases and ponderous pauses were supposed to suggest all sorts of psychic panic and moral havoc in a malignant society.
By disdaining to look and sound like anything overly serious, Mr. Mamet's Pinteresque speech rhythms succeed as nothing since Glengarry Glen Ross (1984 on stage, 1992 on screen) in capturing something pervasively paranoid in contemporary life. Actually, The Spanish Prisoner shares with Glengarry Glen Ross a vision of life as a cosmic con game in which the victimizers feed the fantasies of the victims.
-Roger Ebert: “We
like to be fooled”
There are really only two screenwriters working at the moment whose words you can recognize as soon as you hear them: Quentin Tarantino and David Mamet. All of the others, however clever, deal in the ordinary rhythms of daily speech.
Tarantino we recognize because of the way his dialogue, like Mark Twain's, unfurls down the corridors of long, inventive progressions, collecting proper names and trademarks along the way, to arrive at preposterous generalizations--delivered flatly, as if they were the simple truth.
Mamet is even easier to recognize. His characters often speak as if they're wary of the world, afraid of being misquoted, reluctant to say what's on their minds: As a protective shield, they fall into precise legalisms, invoking old sayings as if they're magic charms. Often they punctuate their dialogue with four-letter words, but in ``The Spanish Prisoner'' there is not a single obscenity, and we picture Mamet with a proud grin on his face, collecting his very first PG rating.
The movie does not take place in Spain and has no prisoners. The title refers to a classic con game. Mamet, whose favorite game is poker, loves films where the characters negotiate a thicket of lies. ``The Spanish Prisoner'' resemblesAlfred Hitchcock in the way that everything takes place in full view, on sunny beaches and in brightly lit rooms, with attractive people smilingly pulling the rug out from under the hero and revealing the abyss.
-MaryAnn Johanson: “We
look but we don't see”
Trust No One
We look but we don't see. That seems to be writer/director David Mamet's theme in The Spanish Prisoner. The film opens on an airport X-ray machine, and invasive types of scrutiny like this run as a motif through the film: security cameras, eavesdropping wires, recording devices. And despite this intense observation, Mamet (who also wrote The Edge) pulls an elaborate con on both his main character and the viewer.
-San Francisco Chronicle: “An
unusually cold film that ends with a feeling of hollow soullessness”
Mamet tips his hand at the beginning of ``The Spanish Prisoner'' -- which takes its title from a legendary confidence game -- by having his characters muse on the reliability of appearances. ``You never know who anybody is,'' Pidgeon observes. ``Why is it that nobody in this world is what they seem?''
``Your problem is you're too nice,'' Jay tells Scott, and in another scene Martin describes his philosophy for survival: ``Always do business as if the person you were doing business with were screwing you, because they probably are. And if they're not, you can be pleasantly surprised.''
Scott, of course, neglects to heed those warnings. When his boss or Martin treats him like a chump, he turns shrill and self- righteous -- as if his fundamental sense of decency had been violated. In the cutthroat, multilayered world that Mamet depicts, that combination of principles and naivete is nothing but deadly.
Con The Spanish Prisoner succede che una volta finito il film, la trama sparisce, e anche il suo "mondo possibilie", e sembra che non ci sia niente oltre il suo ultimo fotogramma.
Andando aldilà dell’intrattenimento, la visione di un film di questo tipo sembra essere una sfida allo spettatore orbene una perdita di tempo. Che cosa sembra piuttosto essere -e chiedere alle spettatore- questo film?
Lo scopo di questa sessione è valutare la possibilità di lavorare con un film come The Spanish Prisoner.
Come si sa, ogni storia si affaccia su un ambito dove confluiscono emozioni che hanno una vicinanza familiare tra di loro e gli “habitus” che le sorreggono. Da qui provengono i cosiddetti “generi”.
Da questa prospettiva si aprono alcune vie di riflessione, tali come: Quali sono gli aspetti emotivi ed abituali che danno senso a The Spanish Prisoner e fanno di questa storia un “thriller”? Quale è la sua proposta vitale? Quale è la risposta personale a tale proposta?
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