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A course of action might be to broadcast the news far and wide, ensuring that no one's vision of your father is left untarnished; certainly one way to destroy a reputation. Then again not only could you appear bad by familial association but you'll also probably end up looking like a spiteful brat whatever the outcome. From watching The Spider's Stratagem you might decide that keeping quiet is the way to go, but then that makes you a collaborator. By wrongfully supporting this heroic aura, not only do you fail to solve your image problem but you're stuck as a lifelong accomplice to the secret. It's a lose-lose situation.
So, what does Athos Magnani (Giulio Brogi) do? Given that, in the beginning, Athos has no interest in the dishevelled small-town that is Tara, not a lot. Having been summoned for purposes unknown by a strange woman, Draifa (Alida Valli), to a place that he's never before set eyes upon, Athos is nonplussed. Since he never knew his father, Athos has no desire to unearth the murderous truth (no matter how elusive) and that's that. Given the uneasy welcome that an ageing population summons up for his questions, you can understand his reaction. However, when inhabitants like Gaibazzi (Pippo Campanini), Costa (Tino Scotti) and Rasori (Franco Giovanelli) become nicely obstructive, The Spider's Stratagem sets its snare for Athos.
In interpreting Jorge Luis Borges' short story Theme of the Traitor and the Hero, director Bernardo Bertolucci proves eloquently reconstructive. The original work, a matter of three or four pages, is densely textual and quite obviously unsuitable for direct adaptation. In The Spider's Stratagem Bertolucci's masterstroke is to make Borges' themes visual, such that they work at a cinematic (rather than literary) level. The film successfully weaves flashbacks into its present narrative, purposely avoiding the usual tricks wielded to indicate such a transition. Thus a blurring occurs, father and son overlapping frame-by-frame, indicating the parallel paths of their two life histories. At times Athos strays dangerously close to the mistress-arms of Draifa, a hairbreadth from becoming his father.
Quickly, yet subtly, Bertolucci establishes the subjective fluidity of recollection (from the context of this particular example). Many of the events playing themselves out are amenable to multiple deconstruction; in some cases the scenes are literally repeated. The overriding sensation is one of uncertainty, that paradoxes abound. Athos, the son, cannot mediate between the opposing descriptions of hero and traitor because they are pure concepts and thus irresolvable; Athos, the father, has no such constraint and embodies both ideas simultaneously. Athos becomes drawn into a philosophical abyss. As a result The Spider's Stratagem is a rather ambiguous viewing experience, so deliberately (and perceptively) enigmatic that you can't but be impressed.
Vittorio Storaro, with some enriching photography, contributes greatly to the film. He captures the sense that Tara is a single train-track from anywhere worth visiting, that it's a timewarp with nothing more concrete than the memory of a local martyr to sustain it; a place eerily quiet rather than pleasantly quiet. A great number of shots employ architectural framing (in streets, windows, etc.) to enhance the sense of claustrophobia and unreality. By making The Spider's Stratagem so intentionally stylised Bertolucci ensures that random details never become so prominent as to detract from the symbolism and direct allusion. Make no mistake, this is an extremely clever picture, one designed to reward analysis rather than intuition. Perhaps not to everyone's taste but certainly worth enjoying when you're in a cerebral mood!
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