Dionysos

The American avant-garde of structural film, to which this film belongs, is a cinematic offshoot of the contemporary intellectual movement that found much more in language than just a neutral means of communication. Words do not merely reflect reality; they change and even transform it according to their own image. With its claim to totalization, the language system serves as a model for the systematicity of human action and thought (and even the most inner processes within ourselves as Lacan postulated when he said that the unconscious is structured like a language). Words and language thus create their own system, to which both the surrounding social world and we submit, as we view the world according to its system. An illustrative example from this film is that individual letters are gradually removed from a series and replaced by the same images of reality (for example, the letter "f" is replaced by a tree). This automatically prompts the viewer to seek the connection between these images and the letter "f" or words beginning with "f". This is, of course, due to the fact that the film initially constructs the entire sequence solely from words. However, this is only a reminder that language (without which human orientation in the world is not possible) always precedes perceived reality. Another example of how words subject reality to themselves is the constant repetition of individual shots of reality. The continuous repetition of the same alphabetical system prevents short shots of reality from exceeding the predetermined space and forces them, along with letters/words, to repeat an endless loop. Interestingly, after the last word disappears, the fragments of reality also disappear because reality cannot be understood without the system of words, the same system that cruelly defines and limits reality. Of course, the film offers much more (due to a completely different filmmaking approach, the introduction and ending are the subject of quite different reflections). For example, some letters, just before they disappear, are represented by words like "system" in the case of "s" and "cycle" in the case of "c" (which is the very last letter in the entire cycle).

In my opinion, the film is not primarily an attempt to depict the obscure love of a woman and a dictator. For that, the psychology of the characters would be too simple and unchanging from one moment on. Therefore, we should rather understand the film as a more general critique of fascism/Mussolini, in which the film form plays a crucial role with the use of alienating effects in the form of period materials. Furthermore, while up until the turning point Mussolini (F. Timi) appears on screen as himself and can be perceived as a human character (with all his flaws), from the moment of the turning point, he presents himself as a perfect duce through period footage. From that moment on, the internal imperfection = inherent self-destruction of fascism also manifests itself, as it tries to destroy the people who are: 1) the duce's biggest supporters - Ida, who will never stop loving Mussolini and thus will never leave the psychiatric clinic, 2) the duce himself - accomplished by destroying his own namesake son, who in the end transforms into his own father (and is therefore also locked up in a psychiatric clinic), symbolized on the film plane by assigning the role of the son to the actor who played Mussolini's father in the first half. In other words, the more perfect the image of the duce in front of the public, the greater the decline of the real duce (or his "alter ego" in the form of his son and devoted love). The criticism of the role of the Catholic Church is also very subtle: there were many compassionate individuals within it, but it is the church as a whole that actually keeps Ida captive to fascist tyranny throughout the film.

Local intellectuals and historians, of course, in 80% of cases, do not comment on the film, but rather express their opinions on the nature of regimes and states, totalitarianism, etc. I did not want to, but I have to ask three questions to everyone who thinks that the USSR and Nazi Germany were the same: 1) How is it possible that a totalitarian regime could perfectly capture the essence of Nazi dictatorship when it would be exposing itself? In that case, the USSR would destabilize itself in front of the eyes of its citizens = viewers, which would put it in a peculiar contradiction, because as a proper totalitarian regime, it should eliminate any signs of its own degradation, imperfection, etc. and eliminate its critics, who would essentially become M. Romm. And not to make that movie at Mosfilm! /// 2) Related to the first question: When I criticize another person for their bad behavior and behave the same way myself, I cannot accurately and insightfully uncover the reasons for the badness of their behavior from a psychological or any other perspective. In other words, how is it possible that the USSR accurately described Nazism when it was to have behaved the same way and the true causes of its own behavior should have been hidden from it, as objective assessment is only capable of by a non-totalitarian consciousness? /// 3) This film is precisely an example that the USSR was capable of self-reflection: after all, criticism of Stalin's cult could not be avoided due to the description of Mussolini/Hitler, and yet it is captured very suggestively in the film, even though it must have been clear that every Russian would recognize it just 12 years after Stalin's death! How is it then possible that totalitarianism changes and criticizes itself when it is supposed to be all-powerful and unchanging, as it is, after all, totalitarian and controls everything and everyone and therefore has no reason to change?

The film is so intertwined with the time of its creation, at least in a formal sense, that it is unnecessary to list all the cinematographic techniques of the second half of the 1960s that the film combines. However, it must be noted that it combines them skillfully and elegantly, a surprising fact for a feature debut. As for the film techniques, one could argue that the obvious inspiration from European and especially French art cinema is perhaps too apparent in a Japanese film. The content is wonderfully intertwined with the form, especially one of the central ideas concerning identity and sight: the LGBT characters, forced to rely on the mediation of sight to establish their own identity (it is their appearance and gaze that (does not) differentiate them from men), are constantly thrown into uncertainty and unreliability of the sense (the explaining scene on the observation tower), constantly aging, constantly resembling men despite make-up, and constantly losing their feminine mask - in short, constantly faced with the unreliability of what we are looking at and how. Essentially, the viewer is also faced with the same dilemma thanks to the use of destabilizing metafictional/quasi-documentary techniques that act as his/her sight.

It may seem stereotypical to some but Costa-Gavras clearly did not want to create a subjective human drama, but an objective view of the world of big banks. I dare say that (especially thanks to the catalytic effect of the economic crisis after 2007), the film also has a didactic function in this sense. This is also related to the stereotypical nature of the characters, but what can be done when in a work whose title the film bears (I mean Marx's "Das Kapital," not the book "Le Capital" by Stéphane Osmont, the literary source of this film)? We can read, for example, on page 251: "As a capitalist, he is merely personified capital. His soul is the soul of capital. However, capital has only one life instinct - the instinct to grow, to create surplus value...." It is not surprising then that the left-wing Costa-Gavras could not make the film any other way. Nevertheless, it is definitely not just cliché and predictable, definitely not. The motivation of the main character is not clear from the beginning and the course of events can be said to be doubly unpredictable. These are conventional film techniques that will not bore you even during the runtime of the film's less than two hours.

Did Malevich's "Black Square" deal a deadly blow to painting as such and does the painter Rodolfo admit it? And yet he still continues to paint? This is called a love for creation as such, a love that all the main characters have more than enough of. However, it does not mean that there is no longer any room for human love. It can only be torn from a life in timelessness when the surrounding world speaks up, in the form of money, from which (unfortunately) artists must draw their livelihood. A funny, melancholic, and at the end bittersweet glimpse into the lives of three men who could have lived both 150 years ago and yesterday.