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Imagine Marco, a brilliant young man, already forging his way in the world, and addressing the radical means by which that world could and should be changed. We have heard the phrase before, in “The Eyes, the Mouth,” in which the hero remembers telling his brother to read “Capital” and getting a curt reply: “Marx can wait.” The documentary confirms-guess what-that this exchange is based on a real recollection, and strengthens our sense that what we are witnessing here is a difficult admission of guilt.
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Here, you realize, is that most uncommon of creatures: the artist who likes to pick a fight with himself. Instead, he commits to a lifelong wrestle with the creed in which he was enfolded as a child.Ī similar honesty can be found in Bellocchio’s political engagement. Not for Bellocchio a blithe dismissal of religious belief as an obvious and antiquated folly, unworthy of our consideration. A quick cut then takes us to a moment of howling blasphemy from “My Mother’s Smile” (2002)-akin, it is suggested, to the forsaken cry of Jesus on the cross. There is a lovely conversation between Bellocchio, ever the unbeliever, and a Jesuit priest, who declares, “I consider you, strangely, as a great apologist for faith,” much to the director’s delight. What’s amazing is that the results rarely come across as depressing or drab my spirits were more thoroughly dampened by the most recent “ Matrix” movie, say, than they were by “Marx Can Wait.” Bellocchio deals in the deeply personal yet somehow not in the private there is a vital robustness to his methods, and the new film, despite facing intractable problems from long ago (“in terms of affection, it was a desert,” we learn of the family), feels sociable and even touched with laughter. Whether creative candor of this extreme variety seems excessive, cruel, brave, or frightening is up to you. When does submissiveness cease to be charitable, one wants to ask, and start to become achingly ingrown? Never, apparently, did he complain about doing so. Paolo used to scream, laugh, and talk aloud to himself, and it was the gentle Camillo who was chosen to sleep in Paolo’s room. There was Paolo, for instance, another sibling, ten years older than the twins, whom Marco refers to as “ il pazzo”-the lunatic, in the bald words of the subtitles. What we get, instead, is a scattering of circumstantial clues. “Marx Can Wait” does not presume to solve the mystery of the suicide at its heart as if any solution can be sufficient, or might mollify the grief of the bereaved.
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Like many documentarians, Bellocchio is alive to the potency of old photographs, as they stop the flow of imagery in its tracks. In a notably good-looking clan, he was the most handsome, as is evident from a wealth of home-movie footage, though he was also overcast by what Alberto describes as a “veil of melancholy.” It is in still images, not moving ones, that the veil is most clearly visible. He was Marco’s twin, born three hours later, and he killed himself at the age of twenty-nine. The principal protagonist of the documentary, Camillo, is conspicuous by his absence from the feast. Dinner time, in “Fists in the Pocket,” was like a ticking bomb, and the hero-if you could call him that-argued that his older brother would find life so much easier if the rest of the household could just die. It is a convivial occasion, with glasses raised in a toast, and such bonhomie, to anyone versed in Bellocchio’s work, is a kind of surprising joke no director has done more to calibrate family tensions, and to stretch them to a snapping point. Bellocchio is in attendance, together with a roster of his relatives, including his four surviving siblings: Letizia, Piergiorgio, Maria Luisa, and Alberto. “Marx Can Wait” begins with a table being laid for a family gathering. Also showing are his two earliest features, “Fists in the Pocket” (1965), which remains every bit as combat-ready as its title suggests, and “China Is Near” (1967)-not easy to see on the big screen, as is often the case with Bellocchio’s movies, so catch it while you can. That strength is apparent in his new documentary, “Marx Can Wait,” which opens at IFC on Friday. The Italian film director Marco Bellocchio, born in November, 1939, is still going strong. Bellocchio deals in the deeply personal yet somehow not in the private.