What's with the Spider?
Can someone please explain to me the meaning of the title? And how it is related to the story?
Thanks
You'll be relieved to know that Robert the Bruce had the same problem..
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MovieChat Forums > Strategia del ragno (1973) Discussion > What's with the Spider?
I wonder too.
I don't remember anyone discussing spiders in the movie, nor do I think it's a reference to Jorge Luis Borges, which I read a long time ago.
I wonder if it has anything to do with the behavior of spiders, but I don't find any parallels between them and this story. Perhaps it refers to the way Athos is trapped in an enigma created by his own father, like flies are by spider webs, but I'll admit that's a pretty sketchy interpretation.
I'd love to read more interpretations.
This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel.
I thought the behavior of the spider towards it prey is what the film was about, one way or another...
So, for those who know the ending, that was the strategy of the spider. ;)
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I have to disagree, unless I'm seeing the behaviour of spiders incorrectly.
The way I understand them, spiders just let their prey come freely to web and get stuck; then they attack.
Now the protagonist comes to the town looking for answers - so he's the fly; but who are the spiders? The townspeople don't passively let him investigate; they want him out, they give him quick answers in the hope that he'll be satisfied and leave. And more importantly, they're not trying to kill him like a spider would a fly.
This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel.
David Bordwell offers an analysis on this film in terms of duration manipulation where he puts forward "Connotatively, it ca be read as applying to Draifa's ploys to entrap Athos in Tara or to Magnani's scenario for his own death; but in my terms here, "the spider's stratagem" aptly characterizes a narration that lures us with the promise of an intelligible fabula and then enmeshes us in elusive but tenacious formal processes."
After reading this analysis and the lengths that Bertolucci went to manipulate the viewer's concept of time manipulation in narrative, I would say that this is spot on.
Where did David Bordwell write that analysis?
This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel.
Narration in the Fiction Film
http://www.amazon.com/Narration-Fiction-Film-David-Bordwell/dp/0299101 746
Athos the son gets entagled in the cobweb of lies created by Athos the father, so now Athos the son feels paralyzed and compelled to carry on the staged legend which can be clearly seen during the inauguration of the monument. This is how it seems to me, at least.
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