Stranezza
Ostensibly the account of a writer’s block endured and overcome, Roberto Andò’s film La Stranezza develops into a kind of parable. The intensely particular becomes an image of universals: the film is really about what it means to be human; what is more, it is a humanising film. I watched it during a transatlantic flight, in the kind of half-stupor such passage induces, and am astonished to find that a number of scenes and dialogues not only remain fresh in my mind but present themselves as carriers of happiness. The ‘strangeness’ to which Luigi Pirandello is subject (a circumstance well known from the author’s life, dramatised with imaginative freedom) is at once constricting and liberating, enabling insight and representation without precedent, born of cordial encounters. Life as theatre: this is what the story is ultimately about. Gently and companionably, Andò prompts a question, addressed to each of us: And you, are you really playing your part?
