When did the evils of our age originate? Second Gus Van Santthe director of Will Hunting – Rebel geniusthere is a special observation point. It’s a sensational news story that occurred in Indianapolis (United States) in 1977: Tony Kiritsis (in the film Bill Skarsgård) kidnaps the son of an insurance broker, carrying out the negotiations live on radio and TV, ending up connecting some personal claims with a widespread perception of injustice. It is a story from 50 years ago that is told by The blackmail thread – Dead Man’s Wirebut it allows us to see in a primitive form problems that today have become much larger and impossible to ignore. Tony would not want to kidnap Richard, the son of insurance broker ML Hall (Al Pacino), but Richard is the only one ready to welcome him while his father is on vacation. He ends up tied to a sawn-off shotgun by an iron cable, while another wire (“of the dead man”, translation of the title Dead Man’s Wire) passes around the trigger, creating a trap that would be triggered upon the first escape attempt. Surreal negotiations begin between the protagonist of the film, the police and the deejay of a local radio station (Colman Domingo).
The presence of a broker and the exasperation of an ordinary person, a hard worker, point directly to the crisis of the subprime mortgages in 2008, when Americans were asked to refinance their debt by pawning their home. This way they would have lost it: Michael Moore told it in Capitalism: A Love Story. Even the scam that Tony says he fell victim to involves the sale of building land, a very promising deal, which ends with greater debt. For Tony, the Halls and their suspicious intercession have something to do with it. The protagonist’s extreme gesture has different causes: on the one hand, he wants restore the American dreamkidnapped by men “who played at being god” (cit.), but there is also a component of personal indignationevident in Hall Sr.’s request for an apology. They seem like the simplest part of a package, the ransom package, with five million dollars in it. Instead they are the most difficult part: the father of the kidnapped man says he respected the laws, although the viewer adheres to the most instinctive and substantial form of justice invoked by Tony – however wrong the kidnapping is.
In Dead Man’s Wire is very present media system of radio and television, which corresponds to the effort of the subjects involved to dominate the narrative. Despite the dramatic situation, Tony seems thrilled by the idea of have finally a publicfrom the possibility of interacting with his favorite deejay. He worries, like everyone else, about check his image in this explosion of different perspectives, he is therefore convinced that everyone is on his side, even the State, which naturally plays a double game by pretending to comply with the kidnapper’s requests without actually giving in to blackmail. It is the embryonic description of today’s challenges: everyone’s belief that they have a potential audience, therefore having to control their own image, even though it ends up exploding into a thousand pieces in a fragmented communication ecosystem; the bubbles, in which everyone is convinced that they are right and surrounded by friends; the institutions, theoretically impartial, in reality torn between the influence of interest groups and the absence of shared world visions.
Al Pacino’s character is the true antagonist in Dead Man’s Wirebut it is distantinteracts by speaking on the phone, is the only stakeholder not physically present on the site. ML Hall is also the only detestable character in the film, ending up in opposition to a community that lives on proximity, shared habits, which knows and builds the history of places. It embodies a distant and omnipotent capital, the concentration of economic forces in a few hands operating remotely. In the specific case, for example, he knows that his interests will be protected by laws and institutions, the former seeking a difficult balance, the latter permeable to potentates.
Dead Man’s Wire is a thriller more interested in context
Dead Man’s Wire it’s a thriller without much tension. Those who know the news story also know the ending, while everyone else’s attention is promptly diverted from the outcome of the kidnapping to what is around. Van Sant puts in first floor il general picture to reveal the nature of the forces participating in the negotiations. The thing the film does very well is clear out il campo from every preventive thesispresenting the facts to the viewer without distorting them tendentiously: Tony’s story becomes an open reflection on the current state of affairs, and this could be the only stance taken with respect to a context dominated by extreme opinions and partisanship, which often have the only results of lack of communication and talking over each other. Too bad just for Skarsgård: he is very good, but as a common man he is not credible. Compare with le foto del reale Tony Kiritsis.
Will Hunting
I watch films and play video games, from a certain point in life I also started writing about them. I am fascinated by the remote corners of the internet, the graphics of the first 3D video games and the images that fall under the not at all defined umbrella of the term aesthetic, with respect to which I carry out a compulsive cataloging activity that has as its point of arrival some Instagram profiles. However, the TV series with the best aesthetics (and the best overall) is The X-Files, which I never ended up not conceiving the thought “there are no more episodes of The X-Files to watch for the rest of my life”. Same thing with Evangelion (the manga).
