•
Rating: "There are no facts, only interpretations" (F. Nietzsche).
* * *
The idea that reality is not what it appears to be, and perhaps not even what can be experienced, but rather resides in the interpretation we give it, was extensively clarified in the mid-19th century by Friedrich Nietzsche, who one fine day went mad in Turin and began to embrace a horse, empathizing with its sufferings. The power of syphilis, or perhaps an extraordinary sensitivity.
In the 20th century, Nietzschean theories, never too in vogue in the highbrow academic world dominated by often uncritical positivism, were variously revisited by many philosophers, such as Gadamer, Habermas, and Derrida, who envision man as the center of a hermeneutic network, where the sentient subject perceives the object only through his interpretation, not always free from prae sudicia - or prejudices, as one might say.
* * *
We are full of prejudices: the gypsy or the immigrant can only be a thief, and a good mayor can only be the one who dismantles the nomad camps, or removes the benches from the park in front of the station to prevent the place from becoming a hub of drug dealing, believing that the removal of the effect determines - in a peculiar logical scientific inversion - the removal of the cause.
We are full of prejudices: for instance, the wolf can only be bad, especially if we meet him in the middle of a forest; the sweet and sensitive little girl can only be a sacrificial victim, passive and destined for death or ruin; likewise, the little girl's old grandmother seems destined to end up in the wolf's jaws, equally frail; and the solution to the problem can only come from the hunter and the values he represents, namely virile strength and technique (rifle) destined to prevail over nature and its bestial instincts.
Our prejudices sometimes anticipate the sense of reality, because very often we take for granted and known what is not, allowing ourselves to be deceived by what we have experienced, or believed to have experienced, or more precisely by a concealed interpretation of non-existent facts as we think we have understood them.
* * *
This little masterpiece of technique and narrative speaks to us precisely about prejudices, precognitions, interpretative spirals, yet making us enjoy (which is not a business for philosophers, but for comedians; not of Socrates or Plato, but of Aristophanes) and, of course, think.
But, if we like, we can also choose not to think and just have fun (although the fun comes from the unexpected and the surprise, so it's not exactly free as it seems to some: and we return to the interpretative spiral mentioned above).
In this film the story of "Little Red Riding Hood" is not exactly the one we know, it can be revisited, and the characters' roles may be altered, reversed and overturned, or fragmented like a mirror (and thus "Deep Red" and "Little Red Riding Hood" would have more than one point of contact).
To the classic characters, just add a mysterious "Bandit Bon Bon," who ravages the forest to steal dessert recipes, and a frog detective who gradually interrogates Red Riding Hood, Wolf, Grandma, and Hunter, reconstructing a plural reality worthy of Kurosawa's best Rashomon.
All with visual elegance, happy strokes, and beguiling irony, blending entertainment and culture, popular culture and philosophy in a manner that is both light and heavy.
Loading comments slowly
