Download (12MB) - University of Salford Institutional Repository

the viewer's psychological proximity to him. Yet the possibility of allegiance with Athos jr.
or other characters is arguably compromised by the obstacles preventing their complete
recognition as rounded, coherent characters, and by the fact that no character is central to the
mediation of the narrative, which remains ambiguous and partially unintelligible. In
particular, Athos jr.'s unresolved ambiguity prevents viewers from formulating a moral
evaluation of his behaviour, distancing them from the diegetic world.
Creating intense empathic phenomena
However, the proximity to Athos that the alignment allows is fostered by several scenes of
empathy, whose positions in the film reflect Plantinga's observation about powerful
emotional effects being achieved 'after a protagonist has undergone some kind of trial or
sacrifice', and by connecting such scenes with the 'moral and ideological project of the film'
(Plantinga, 1999: 253). In Stratagem the empathy scenes are linked to an awareness of Athos
jr.'s realization that his life will always be conditioned by a past that does not belong to him -
a melancholic state of mind whose exacerbation is displayed in the sequence that depicts him
in tears as he vandalizes his father's plaque. The viewer's affective closeness to Athos jr. is
enhanced by the way scenes of empathy are linked with those of compassion for his father, so
that their melancholy is juxtaposed. Consequently, the identification of Athos sr. with the
lion's destiny is emphasized by a combination of facial close-ups and POV structures, while
his passive submission to his colleagues' violence is highlighted by the repeated close-ups of
his bloody, grieving face. Similarly, Athos jr/s experiences in Tara are marked by countless
close-ups and POV shots that consolidate a sense of vulnerability up to the moment when his
emotion replicate his father's terror decades earlier, depicted in the sequence where
Bertolucci cross-cuts between images of father and son as they run across a crop field, thirty
years apart.
100