We have the United States of America which burst into the Twentieth-one Century fully aware of their own vulnerability, and Europe, which ever since the end of World War II has always turned to America in the hope to find a guide, a light, a chance to start again even when living through the most difficult moments. In the imagery and from a linguistic point of view ‘America’ and ‘USA’ have come to be seen as a whole, ; however, the country has long since lost the allure which had been attributed by its lovers and opposers.
On the other hand, Hollywood has always indicated a way out, reformulating themes and technologies, anticipating new ways of life and favouring original habits or joining the embrional mutation in marketing logic. These are the American visions, which have grown weaker, yes, (…) A business which has never stopped and keeps updated thanks to its “on air” approach over the wars in progress, more careful and able to produce amazing tv series on terrorism, conspiracies and post-September 11 shadows (for example 24 with Kiefer Sutherlad).
On the other hand, the sagacious and independent cinema did not limit itself to the traditional genres, but has tried to exorcise the crisis of ideas by experimenting narrative hybrids and revisiting the recent and distant past in a way which in Italy is a sort of taboo or seen as a sort of caricature affair.
In Eastwood’s movies, the careful slowness of the framing and the classic approach to a cinema of ‘special affections’, America once again regains its role of promised land, yet an ‘unkept’ promise. It is the America with its omnipotent frenzy, which coincides with an eternal adolescence and lost innocence, the one narrated by Charlie Chaplin and Easy Rider.
Oscar Iarussi is a journalist, essayist and film critic. Born in Foggia in 1959, he lives and works in Bari.
