Federico Pistono

Writing about a film. That's a though one. Most of film critics are stagnant pointless regurgitation of the film's story, with a few sporadic notion of understanding and buzz-words, mostly placed to merely satiate the occasional reader's desire of obtaining a cool sounding sentence to repeat in fronts of their friends.

There is, however, an exiguous group of individual writers who manage to write something meaningful when speaking of a film. And they accomplish that for hundreds of films, if not thousands. This can only occur when you are truly committed to understand the meanings of the work, both technically and thematically, and by not repeating themselves over and over, perhaps throwing definitive sentences like candies. No, they do it right, they understand. They are professionals.

It's about the little things, really. How do you harvest such a copious vocabulary and manage not to look excessively archaic? How do you get the point so straight and simple, yet so direct and acute? Do you build that over time, or is it something more?

One problem with professionals is that very rarely they stumble across a truly independent film production, mainly due to overwhelming request for mainstream films by they're editor and publishers. That I imagine is the motive by which I did not find a decent review for Possession (1981). I deeply believe that this film is a masterpiece, in so many ways I can't explain now. Just because nobody is not yet capable of understanding, it does not mean that the film doesn't qualify as a masterpiece.

Maybe one day I will be able t do that, to describe how I feel about that film and why I consider Andrzej Żuławski a true genius.

Maybe, one day, I will.