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What made this film so compelling to me was that it was able to marry a very accessible thriller story to a challenging psychological exploration of a child's mind as he meets the rites of passage into "manhood." The film employs elements of Freudian understanding in dramatizing the structure of this young boy's consciousness. We meet him when he is ten years-old, on the verge of puberty. At this crucial age, he meets a blonde child confined to a cave. The brunette lead, as it turns out, later discovers that the other boy, like him, is ten years-old. In fact, using the language of comic books, the young protagonist tries to justify the mystery boy's inexplicable confinement by inventing a story about two twins born to one mother -- a "normal" brunette one and a mad blonde one. The mad one must be ostracized by his seclusion in a hole at the top of a hill.
His invented story is not "correct" in the literal sense, but it does reveal the child's deep connection to the unknown quantity lurking inside the hole, imagining him to be as close as a twin. I am reminded of Josef Conrad's Secret Sharer as a story with a similar level of complexity and subtle attention to detail.
This is a rare intellectual film that can be wholeheartedly enjoyed by those beyond academia.
score 9/10
tonyhale 27 February 2005
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1029757/ |
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3-3-2021 00:05:06