History Lessons

As usual the Straubs take as their starting point a literary text,this time Brecht's novel "The Affairs of Mr. Julius Caesar" which they use to deconstruct the harsh reality of Roman history.The dialogue is spoken in lengthy monologues by a peasant,a writer,a banker and a lawyer speaking directly to the camera.These dialogues are interspersed with three very long tracking shots of a car driven by a young man through the streets of modern Rome,a device which anticipates Kiarostami's "Ten" by thirty years.These modern scenes set up the dialectic between past and present,between the economic and civil corruption of ancient Rome with the decadence of its modern counterpart.While the ancient buildings have decayed,the same political and economic dilemmas which Brecht's characters describe still thrive amidst the new vistas of Rome's gleaming office blocks and skyscrapers.