BESEIGED

Self-proclaimed Marxist filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci has drifted toward cultural Marxism and even some spiritual themes in his later years. Even so, he continues to try to break down moral virtues. He has gotten a lot subtler about it, however, since his famous LAST TANGO IN PARIS in the early 1970s.

If one wonders why cultural Marxists want to break down moral virtues, read THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO. Marx goes on and on about how horrible the bourgeois institution of marriage is and how religion is the opiate of the people. Of course, this ranting and raving may have been a rationalization for his profligate lifestyle, which destroyed his own family.

At any rate, BESIEGED is a beautifully filmed story about a beautiful woman besieged by inner turmoil. The movie opens in an African country where Shandurai (Thandie Newton, last seen in BELOVED) works at a rehabilitation clinic for crippled and handicapped children. A countless number of them are lined up in their wheel chairs as she rides her bicycle home. Meanwhile, the army is putting up posters of the latest dictator all over her village. At the same time, an African folk singer sings ballads under a tree. He reappear singing ballads throughout the film.

After a long bicycle ride, Shandurai gets to the school where her husband teaches, but she is too late. The army has come and arrested her husband. Hearing his screams and seeing him being kicked and punched at a distance, she wets herself in fear.

Next, the movie cuts to Rome where a concert pianist named Jason Kinsky (David Thewlis) has inherited a lavish but rundown apartment from his aunt. He refuses to give concerts except for himself. Shandurai is now his maid. She is extraordinarily lithe and pretty, and he is infatuated with her. At one point, he confesses that he loves her. She rebukes him.

Therefore, he begs, “I’ll do anything to win your love.”

She responds, “Free my husband from prison.”

So that is exactly what he sets out to do. He goes to an African church and works with the priest to free Shandurai’s husband. He sells all of his antiques and even his beloved piano to buy the freedom for her husband. As the days pass, Shandurai realizes what Kinsky is doing. She is besieged by his generosity and the intense music he composes for her. On the night before her husband returns, she succumbs to Jason’s siege and goes to bed with him.

Bertolucci has become a lot subtler in this film. It doesn’t have the long sex scenes of LAST TANGO IN PARIS. In fact, there is only one brief scene of Shandurai becoming sexually excited in her sleep, and then going upstairs to lie next to the drunken Kinsky. However, this subtlety and the beauty of Shandurai is a lot more erotic than many of Bertolucci’s more blatant works.

Critics have raved about BESIEGED. Bertolucci uses film and image in unique ways, but at the root is a traditional story line. Regrettably, the story is about a woman who turns from being very much in love and committed to her husband, to a woman who finally succumbs to adultery; therefore, the movie is morally bad.

Sexual ambiguity reigns throughout the movie. Shandurai’s best friend at school is homosexual, but says he will give up his homosexuality for her. Jason Kinsky himself appears to be homosexual, but she is the ultimate object of his desire.

Thus, Marxist humanism triumphs without regard for spiritual, moral or eternal elements. In the final analysis, the cultural Marxists have BESIEGED the audience in Bertolucci’s movie. This is one more piece of propaganda in their arsenal.