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The actor, screenwriter and director, Italian by origin and now working in Bangkok, makes a film inspired by Pasolini, Pinter, Guttuso, but it is a real journey into the emotions and the will to rise and redeem. It also tells the story of those who are losers in this struggle.
The actor, screenwriter and director, Italian by origin and now working in Bangkok, makes a film inspired by Pasolini, Pinter, Guttuso, but it is a real journey into the emotions and the will to rise and redeem. It also tells the story of those who are losers in this struggle.
Useful Idiots, a film directed and interpreted by Maurizio Mistretta, is something more than a film. It has the appearance and structure of a film but it is also a real journey into the emotions, into the various worlds that characterize the human being and his individual way of living in this Space/Time that we all are in.
Mistretta, founder of BIAG, Bangkok International Artists Guild, says that -an early draft of the screenplay, derived from an earlier play based on a text by Pinter- was revised by Gerard Maurez, a French screenwriter who modulated it for a more mainstream audience. In reality, it still remains a film with a strong authorial edge.
In the current draft, in fact, two female figures -two sisters played by two Thai girls- who want to avenge the murder of their third sister, have gradually assumed greater importance, until they become the main characters of the entire filmic plot. These female figures, in fact, "tell" about perdition and the strong will to rise again - like the Arabian Phoenix - from its own ashes. They contrast a violent and degraded world, populated mainly by male figures but all of them -in the end- submit to a third will, an "organization" that goes beyond the individual power of each of the characters.
The journey through human worlds, from the lowest and most decadent to the most ethereal of love and the desire for redemption, is permeated with the visions of Pasolini, in the centenary year of his birth, but also of Harold Pinter and even Renato Guttuso, according to the declared intentions of those who have variously participated in the making of the film.
The female figures, interpreters of this strong will to break the chains that hold them back and to become, in this way, promoters of their own redemption in the world, become like Beatrice for Dante, "high" figures, Renaissance, that induce to improve themselves, to grow, they push upwards. The male figures, on the other hand, are a bit like Virgil in the Divine Comedy, that is, a "guide" in the dark meanderings of daily life, problems of money, finding a job, realizing oneself, a dark world where some find the easy way to solve everything: plunder, kill, steal what belongs to others, obtained by others.
This loophole is short-lived, Death debases everything, annihilates, hides behind every corner, behind every face and comes unexpectedly to take everything. What remains on the ground is the final outcome of the action of each subject: to succumb to third will or react and rise from themselves?
This doubt is what moves the nirvanic machine that underlies the filmic narration.
In the presentation text of the film, among other things, Mistretta writes: "USEFUL IDIOTS wants to be a meeting point between neorealism and the absurdity of existence. A combination of modern elements and a desire for poetry that is lost without remedy. The film is set in a hopelessly corrupt present and uses contemporary language. It is a tragicomic epic of absurd characters inserted into a plot that seems like a noir revenge well plotted by some hidden entity. My film is a representation of the madness of life in a rigorously realistic way: the perfect encounter between Pasolini and Pinter. The result brings a feeling of magical realism where sometimes you can feel the comedy, but not for long".
The film Useful Idiots sees the presence of actors of 10 different nationalities who participated in the filming all carried out in compliance with the regulations in force regarding the protection of Covid. The film production has also obtained the adhesion of the company Pantera Film that will take care of the distribution all over the world.