| BESIEGED Director: Bernardo Bertolucci "We had the pleasure and the challenge of trying to tell a strory in the most intimate terms, beyond spoken language. I think the silences tell much more than the confrontation of words. In this house, there is a confrontation of silences. That of course pushed us to invent, to have more ideas with the camera and lights and interior." Bernardo Bertolucci Critic Pauline Kael once praised director Bernardo Bertolucci by pointing out that, “he has a poet's gift for using objects, landscapes and people expressively, so that they all become part of his vision.” She wrote that in 1972 after he directed The Conformist and before he began to make the epic style films that won him big awards. Let’s be honest though -- as good as those epics looked they had become a bit labored and forced. Lately though Bertolucci has begun to loosen up again as he works with a smaller palette. Besieged, his 14th feature, is a wonderfully fresh and beguiling movie that involves the nature of unrequited love between two people of entirely different classes, cultural backgrounds and stages in life. First and foremost it is an intimate work with little dialogue that crackles with style via the use of jump cuts, close-ups, magnificent camera work and a tricky analytical style of editing. Indeed, Bertolucci and cinematographer Fabio Cianchetti have essentially created a modern day silent film complete with elements of politics and romance. The two characters Mr. Kinsky (the ever-quirky David Thewlis) and Shandurai (Thandie Newton in a quiet yet effective role) couldn’t be more different. He is an eccentric rich musician and she is an African political refugee who does his housekeeping. He composes classical music and she cleans the house by night to help pay her tuition to a local medical school. The first scene, located in Africa, sets the cultural and political stage as we learn that Shandurai’s husband has been taken away by local African authorities and is still in prison. Now in Italy she works and attends school all the while longing to see his release. As the movie progresses so does their relationship, but not before they share some embarrassing emotional moments. Kinsky--in a startling moment of melodramatic passion-- cracks his reclusive emotional shell and tells her he loves her and is willing to do anything for her. What he doesn’t know is that she is already married. The remainder of the film delineates his wholehearted attempts to prove his love for her. The energy and precision of the direction takes the movie above its simple fairy tale trappings. Bertolucci has a remarkable use of space in Kinsky’s multi-level house. Especially with the use of her cramped quarters and his wide-open loft. And the way a winding staircase connects the two levels as well as the area the two characters encompass. Bertolucci has mastered the use of visual storytelling here. There is hardly a wasted shot and each one beautifully adds to the whole effect of the movie. The use of music is impressive too because it doesn’t feel slapped together as most soundtracks do these days. Instead, it is primary to the emotions and communications of the characters. Kinsky is a classical pianist and his music is Old World European with an occasional modern influence. While Shandurai emotionally lives and breaths her contemporary African pop music. Their lives seem set to the music we hear on the soundtrack and, at first, this is the primary way that they they communicate with one another. After Kinsky proposes to her she rushes into his room, where he is playing a romantic piano piece, and blurts out her rejection of him by saying, “I don’t understand your music.” Later she is cleaning an adjacent room while he composes a jazzy piece and she slowly looks his way and then there is a moment where they make serious eye contact for the first time.... Then the phone rings. It sounds goofy on paper but works well because of the emotional truths of the performances and design of the directing and editing. Bertolucci is back on track with Besieged a movie that, like his own Last Tango in Paris, realistically blends revolutionary politics with precarious romances between strangers. His themes as always are on the impossibility of political freedom and irrational love. But rather than having everything end tragically he sees the sacrifices that one must make in order to achieve both. - Matt Langdon |