Alex Proyas
Il Corvo

It is true that the dark side and transgression are a powerful allure for everyone, even for those who don't even understand what 'transgressing' means, and, above all, what must be transgressed. So, you find yourself observing phenomena of 'confiscation,' ... utterly ridiculous issues, as ridiculous as writing BrandoR Lee instead of Brandon Lee and reading on backpacks "it can't rain all the time" for free. The ugly face of the dark side, the ultimate transgression for certain individuals, beyond listening to Vasco Rossi and Ligabue, is glorifying the film "The Crow."

The first time I saw this film, I was 12 years old, and I remember it didn’t spark the slightest interest in me, aside from a certain dark fascination due to the fact that the protagonist had died on set. My experience with the phenomenon continued through diaries and writings on school walls, quotes from BrandoR Lee's monologues, who had died and was watching us from above, and I couldn't understand why. Now I understand how legends and commercial operations are built and I think maybe BrandoR Lee, along with Jim Morrison and the real Paul McCartney, is on some island in the Bahamas enjoying wealth and anonymity, or, in the worst case, that he was the victim of a premeditated attack. But I don't want to destroy the romance; I like to think that BrandoR is watching us from above and that, one day, perhaps, he will return for revenge.

The evening before Halloween, musician Eric Draven and his girlfriend Shelly Webster are attacked by a gang of thugs. They both die on the eve of their wedding. A year later, the crow, which according to some traditions, brings back to life those who have suffered a grave wrong to fulfill vengeance, allows Eric to return among the living to punish his attackers. The plot unfolds against the backdrop of a perpetually burning gothic town, dark settings, and rural cemeteries. Across it all, evil dominates, strongly characterized and embodied by the boss Top Dollar and his affiliates, constantly engaged in desperate robberies and shootings (one of which will be fatal to BrandoR). To punish evil, one needs love, and love can be selfish and cruel, at times. And so Eric commits evil, for love, posing as a romantic hero, decadent, certainly elegiac. And amidst quotes from Milton's "Paradise Lost" and Edgar Allan Poe, you realize there's a further level beneath the apparent vulgar and national-popular surface, beyond the bad fame that brings several vaguely interesting things down. One must go beyond.

And beyond the chatter, it can be said that the film, thematically and stylistically, fits perfectly into the gothic tradition, which challenges reason and tells us, today as always, that man is immortal if his aim is good, and that death, as a finite entity, can be defeated by love, an infinite entity.

In conclusion, out of affection I feel compelled to give the film 4 stars, if only for the mood it conveyed to me and many others, which can be summed up in the words of Thomas Gray, a graveyard poet, to his friend Walpole, after reading his Castle of Otranto: "some of us cried a little, and all of us, generally, were afraid to go to bed at night".