The Conformist (2012)

Don't listen to the negative reviews

The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Worst movie ever seen? Very time wasting. It took me whole day to watch this movie as this was very boring and there was nothing in it.

The Conformist is very stylish in the way that fashion advertising or New Romantic music videos are stylish. It's self-consciously stylish. Dominique Sanda walks along a corridor and strikes a scornful pose in the doorway of a room like someone parading on the catwalk. Jean-Louis Trintignant walks along the pavement in front of an art deco building as the camera tracks with him in a wintry twilight. At the corner he stops, turns, gestures. A vintage car rolls up. So chic. The acting is stylish. It has that operatic largeness that we get in Visconti's later films. You can see the actors' performances from the balcony. At first all this attention to style is beguiling. There is a strange scene in an insane asylum filmed in the EUR complex. It looks oppressive and futuristic and dream-like, like a scene from 8 ½, but it becomes apparent that all this attention to style has no meaning. It is style for styles sake. At the end of one scene a shot is stitched on of autumnal leaves blown ominously along. What could it mean? Is it the "Wind of Change"? No, it's just leaves whisked about for visual pleasure. Who are we to scorn visual pleasures you may say, but the problem is that, at its worst, the visual pleasures begin to lead the action. The viewer begins to sense that a beautiful image was visualised and then a scene written to incorporate it. The characters' motivation is apparently to complete compositions or visual effects. Unfortunately for the viewer The Conformist is not content with stylish shallowness and tries to achieve depth or insight with what turns out to be a Freudian kitsch. There is a veritable cesspool of confusing childhood sexual experiences giving rise to bizarre adult behaviours. Fascism itself is some kind of psycho-sexual fantasy. It's all so very chic and depraved. Sadly we don't so much witness character development as a bunch of ids bumping against each other. It makes for tiresome viewing and tells us nothing about the psychology of Fascism or anything else that might give the film purpose. The Conformist looks good, sometimes thrillingly so, but it is weighed down by its rather dated psycho-sexual approach to character. The story suffers worst of all, being completely squeezed out by these other dominant elements.

Some critics say this is an important, thought-provoking film. I guess they are right, because it provoked me to think about a question that has bothered me for some time: Why do I keep watching these dumb foreign films just because critics tell me they are important and thought provoking? As is typical for a dumb foreign film, there is a lot of decadent sex. For example, the protagonist figures his half-brother is giving their mother morphine and having sex with her, so he has a fellow fascist slap him around. And by George, that is the last we hear about that! I guess this is what foreign directors call "character development." If so, there is plenty more character development in this movie. Anyway, as the title indicates, the protagonist just wants to conform and be like everyone else. So I guess he figures a good way to conform is by being an assassin. And to have more character-developing sex.

What is it, where is it, how will it affect me? In a 1938 politically unstable Europe, a weak-willed Italian man becomes a fascist flunky who goes abroad to arrange the assassination of his old teacher, now a political dissident. Il Conformista is a work of art that's as close to flawless as one can get. It's dapper, sophisticated, sexy, compelling and dearly cosmopolitan, whilst being metaphorical and gripping. And, moreover, for a subject matter than little of the audience will have any personal or sentimental connection with, it's deeply powerful and engrossing. Il Conformista paints the portrait of a bohemian, artistic and edging closer-to rapture Europe yet still highlights through intricate narrative, an in-depth character study of the weak willed, the distressed and the deluded a Europe that is on a political tether. In its parades and its dances, through its screams and its silence, Il Conformista is a masterpiece that connects the now and then, conflicting desires, oozing style and a confused culture in more colour, more grit and more eloquence than the proclaimed greats of yonder years ever managed to. The climactic ending is a highlight with an almost perpetual aftertaste, where the conformist himself (Jean-Louis Trintignant) undertakes the assassination of his former mentor in a misty, dimly lit wood, a setting to quench the thirst of Arthur Conan-Doyle, as the victim's wife, a former lover, screams bitterly. Our conformist relaxes, his hat shadowing his face, his eyes glinting with thoughts of a million facets pouring over them. Il Conformista is littered with endless examples of seductive cinematography, bold and inviting colour schemes, elaborate musical ventures and stylistically superior heights than anything I've ever seen. Nevertheless, at the end of the day, Il Conformista is a thriller, and it certainly is thrilling, to say the least. To an impatient viewer, Il Conformista has whole other arsenal dimension of scenes that focus on deceit, murder, ill-intention and metaphorical dissidence. To a historian, the way that the portrayed era's political climate is capitalised on and exploited for dramatic effect is staggeringly remarkable. And lastly, to an artist, Bertolucci's genius behind the camera and his steady, wise hand in directing the lighting is second to none.