Dalton Trumbo
E Johnny Prese Il Fucile

Last day of World War I (!!!): young recruit Joe Bonham is severely injured following the explosion of a grenade. After repeated surgeries, he will lose his arms and legs, while injuries to his face will deprive him of sight, hearing, smell, and the ability to speak. His fate will be to impatiently await death in a hospital bed, completely isolated from the world, devoid of any knowledge of space and time, and in the company of only his brain.

In 1971, the first (and only) work by sixty-five-year-old Dalton Trumbo, a writer and screenwriter distinguished over the years for his pacifist and anti-fascist struggles (a registered member of the Communist party, he was even arrested during McCarthyism), is released. Inspired by a real-life event and based on the namesake novel by Trumbo published in 1938 (for which the author also created a radio broadcast), "Johnny Got His Gun" became a true cult movie of anti-war propaganda in America, while in Italy, it remained a relatively unknown title for a long time. Most people learned of its existence through the Metallica "One" music video, which included excerpts from the film.

While it may not be a masterpiece and at times may inevitably seem a bit heavy, the film is a unique episode in the history of cinema, precisely because it was conceived by a non-director and constructed not following the rules of canonical cinema: the direction is elementary and didactic (camera movements are almost absent, while fixed shots abound), and it is evident how the narrative flow is heavily influenced by the original conception of the work as a literary text. However, the honesty and passion with which the director crafts his life's project make it a truly interesting and, in certain aspects, unmissable piece.

The desolate hospital scenes (shot in black and white, with the soldier's voice-over expressing his thoughts and obsessions) alternate with (shot in color and adopting a surreal style filled with symbolism) memories of the past and nightmares shaking the soldier's psyche, in a state of delirium and despair. The narrative evolves on this contrast, never linear but perfectly understandable, of this work, suspended between raw realism and dreamlike visions.

The confused awakening, the dismay with which the protagonist gradually becomes aware of his absurd situation, the anguish linked to impotence, the despair over the indifference of the surrounding world (Johnny, communicating through Morse code with sharp head movements, will demonstrate to the doctors that he is fully capable of reasoning and willing, but will be cynically ignored and isolated like a military secret), the relationship with a nurse (the only one to understand the emotional situation of the patient), the agonizing request for death, the delirium, leading to the chilling and desolate finale: all told with cold realism but also with sarcasm and biting irony (don't miss the dreams, full of crazy and hallucinated characters, particularly the scenes featuring an excellent Donald Sutherland as a grotesque and dazed Christ!), without ever descending into cheap sentimentality and schmaltz. What emerges is a bitter experience, but not devoid of a certain underlying vivacity and a certain dark humor which will undoubtedly elicit, here and there, a sincere laugh or two.

The protagonist himself (a sort of tormented "Tommy" ante litteram, stripped of all the playful contours of the famous Who's work, and clad in that "anonymous normality" that makes him the best representative of the universal victim of war madness), is crafted with sobriety, without particular psychological artifices and without the search for particular empathic bridges with the viewer, who will follow his sad vicissitudes, sharing his sufferings more on a rational level than an emotional one. After all, the film is and remains a work of denunciation, a pacifist manifesto in which, perhaps too explicitly and excessively didactic, it represents the perverse machine that is war, supported and justified by a whole series of factors (politics, science, religion, culture, family) that compose a mad and self-referential system, where no one is fully guilty and aware of their active role (and thus seemingly outside of any direct and conscious responsibility), but where at the same time, everyone contributes to fueling its inexorable operation.

Always relevant in its underlying message, "Johnny Got His Gun" is also a relentless essay on the alienation of the mind (truly a cause of anxiety and claustrophobia for the viewer, all the speculative twists of the poor protagonist, the "thinking trunk" intent on coming to terms with an existence completely confined to his head and cut off from all external communication), which, in my opinion, becomes even more relevant if one considers today's debates on themes of euthanasia, the meaning of life, and its claimed sanctity. Must see.