Viator Veritatis

'La linea inivisble' is a serious film, but one deeply ingrained in the current soporific cinematography: slow, intimate and minimalist. The plot almost completely ignores ETA's ideological motivations and the political issues of the period, which one would expect to be its chore element. Instead it concentrates on the interiority of the protagonists, portayed in lingering, stretched out frescos of everyday life.

The director seeks to spot at all costs sorrowful aspects in the characters' psyche, and this leads him to styling them questionably. For example the protagonist, Txabi Etxebarrieta, described by the sources as a brilliant personality, full of energy and apt to catalyze his companions' energies around him, is turned into a kind of introverted nerd who mainly chooses to fight the Franco's state out of emulation toward an older brother and because of a missed romance.

This sombre mood is then used to disapprove of the choice to take arms as a kind of self-detrimental and self-deluding folly, which no healthy youth would seriously contemplate.

The very few scenes of gunfighting or street turmoil are realized in a static and unrealistic way, as it might have been done 50 years ago. The director is not interested in them.

The three stars are bound to my expectations that a film on this topic discusses the social, political and ideological landscape of the period. If you like the mental masturbations that represent the chore of degenerate art, feel free to consider it an eight or nine-stars production.

Artsy trash only good for fashionable viewers. The entertainement value of this wearisome flick is below zero. Extremely slow dialogues and character development, no question ever gets a clear answer, muddy storyline, smug display of child nudity as a cheap appeal to the main audience who would otherwise desert this pretentious rubbish.

If you care nothing about photography, music scores and intellectual gobbledygook, and are just looking for an intelligent, involving horror story, do yourself a favor and stay away from this pretentious nonsense.

Quite an interesting, intellectual film. It beautifully captures the landscapes of the Langhe hills, as well as the faces, clothing and attitudes of their inhabitants, and the general atmosphere of partisan warfare.

However, the director remains almost imprisoned in his attempt to transpose Fenoglio's book into a film. He tends to portray too many isolated parts of the book with strict accuracy and so misses the substance. Some crucial themes are just hinted at and almost impossible to catch for a viewer who didn't read the book: the partisans' disorganization, the feuds between communist and moderate bands, the reluctance of the latter to engage in any serious fight, Johnny's critical relationship towards his comrades that moves him to switch allegiance from one group to another. Furthermore, the fighting scenes are decontextualized beyond the point; for example, the partisans' desperate effort to melt through the lines of the major Fascist encirclement does not express the drama conveyed by Fenoglio's intense description, and is almost reduced to a fighting scene like any other.

The film tends to concentrate on one message: the boredom and meaninglessness of war, and especially of partisan warfare, dominated by long periods of inactivity suddenly broken by abrupt, mostly unexpected shootouts against an often invisible enemy. In a different cultural context this might be a powerful message, but in present cinematography it seems to me too conventional and politically correct to deserve any special praise. Where is a war film that doesn't strive to convey some kind of pacifist undercurrent? In the same way, Johnny's silent, introverted idealism embodies a contrasting point to the general atmosphere of monotony and purposelessness. It risks to turn the film into still another idealization of Antifascist resistance and the protagonist into the stereotype of the tormented hero, full of misgivings and yet willing to overcome his doubts and problems to advance the cause of good and see that justice is finally done. If you want to build a Proustian mood please do not warp it subtly in its opposite by appending some redeeming ideological mumbo jumbo to it.

A remarkable film to watch for the patient viewer, but do yourself a favor and watch it cum grano salis.