Con los puños en el bolsillo

Seriously though, Fists in the Pocket is a fairly unique experience for any era of cinema, and I can only imagine being born too late to see this on original release how audiences (the ones who stuck with it anyway) were agog at some/most of the details as they unfold here. What marks it as so interesting and ultimately special as a darkly dramatic- and almost if it moved just a smidgen to the left or the right harrowingly satirical (and if it became twee it would be well Royal Tenenbaums I digress)- is how Bellocchio has such a miserable character at the center but the filmmaking, the direction and that eerie Morricone score included, is anything but.

Leo Castel is also a major reason this stands out for its time or any time. Maybe the closest his character reminds me of is the lead from Before the Revolution, only instead of an idealistic would-be Socialist it is a malcontent epileptic in a fairly well off secluded family where everyone kind of loathes one another. This is except the blind mother of then all who, well, needs help and guidance even to cut up her dinner, and doesn't really reciprocate it with anything like a mother usually does with affection. With Castel though, he has this leering look and this posture that says that he has had it and is so completely pathological, and yet his performances humanizes someone who we should despise from minute one.

Frankly... it is hard not to feel like young Alessandro will snap and do *something*, but the way he goes about it is equally fascinating and sickening. This isnt a horror film in the visceral extremes of the period like Polanski was doing, but it is a story where Alessandro dwells in his psychopathy and when, as it turns out, his best paid (dumbass) plan to snuff he and his family out in one fell swoop doesn't turn out, he goes about Plan B with his mom and then another character I won't mention and what makes it so fascinating is what is equally repellant about him. There's this icy logic where he suddenly explodes into bursts of laughter and energy, and he is so often sweating and looking in a daze (or about to have what could be another fit) and you don't know where he will pop off next.

It only occurred to me as I type this that this movie reminded me of a much less sneering and sarcastic Saltburn, only if the Barry Keoghan character was in the family wholly and not an interloper. While it's not a one to one comparison, like that film too Bellocchio is dedicated to his arsthetic and to making the look and feel of the film very particular. Fists in the Pocket often emphasizes Alessandro's point of view, like when he is at that party and sort of staring around at everyone and unable to really be able to have fun, and at other times like when he's chucking everything into that small bonfire and going ecstatic, that energy comes out through those erratic cuts - not even jump cuts exactly, more like it's shards of Alessandro's mind and body and soul being chucked around in that chaos.

I don't know if it is a particularly *enjoyable* experience exactly, but it is memorable because of how uncompromising Bellocchio shows this character and the nature of him in this family and how everything may be shown for a politically provocative effect. I've seen other reviews call this a Deathdream or expound about it being a parable for the end point of Socialism, and I don't know if I'm qualified enough to go down those rabbit holes. What I did pick up on was how this filmmaker is I don't think even showing something personal about himself (I hope not *that* far), but how if one takes masculine pride and economic striving (money means a lot to Alessandro, like... a lot) to a much further extent you do get someone like this guy, especially one so young and ruthless and without, needless to say, empathy.

Oh and did I mention how remarkable the actress playing the sister Giulia is? Because, my goodness that scene where she is in bed and says she doesn't love him anymore, you suddenly see this wounded heart bleeding all over the place. Fists in the Pocket is not a scary kind of horror rather that it is about the mania that unfolds when a human being can't be kept in any kind of check is... this. I have to wonder if Yorgos Lanthimos is a fan, albeit he is not Italian so it is a little different (ie Dogtooth or Sacred Deer, another Keoghan btw).