The Kiss of the Spider Woman

In the novel The Kiss of the Spider Woman, Manuel Puig, employs a very experimental narrative by telling the story mainly through dialogue with research-form footnotes as support along the book. He also includes the narration of several movies along the novel to accentuate and draw metaphors of the two main characters, whose intrinsic differences end up bringing them very close together. The novel is very well crafted and the relationship between the characters is humorous and complex. In the adaptation of this film, Hector Babenco, attempts to portray this, yet it is something particularly difficult to do in the limited cinematic time. The relationship of the characters in the movie seems much more theatrical and shock oriented than the way it develops in the novel, which follows a much more natural course. The film is surely attempted and achieved some interesting objectives, yet the excessive theatrical aspect blocks the plausibility that the book has. Regardless of these issue, the main problem that the movie faces is the language change in an attempt to reach a wider audience, yet remain in a Latin setting. Those are two things that in my opinion cannot merge. There are great adaptations that are translated to other languages, but they are also transported to that correspondent setting. The movie would achieve a greater verisimilitude if it would take place in an English speaking country, with no fake accents, and it could still remain appealing to the wide Hollywood audience, although that would end in a much more distant adaptation, which would have been hard with Puig as an active part in the making of the film. The film would have also worked a lot better if it was further from Hollywood, given its independent and experimental nature, and made into a true Latin American movie. The film does stand on its own, but at the moment of comparing it to the novel, it has a very far feel to the original impact that the book causes, and it has very little of the novels subtlety.

Memories of Underdevelopment

The Cuban film, Memories of Underdevelopment, has a strong political presence, for its social issues very evident and blunt. Although, it escapes from being a propaganda film or from having a heavy-handed political statement very gracefully, for its statement has more a social tone than a political one. “The only possible way to attain objectivity is through well intentioned subjectivity,” says the Peruvian writer Alfredo Bryce Echenique, and this film is a latent proof of that. It makes a criticism from a loving, amiable point of view, a criticism not only of the revolution, but of mankind and ignorance. It shows both sides of the story from the perspective of a true artist that believed in the revolution, but soon realized that it was just another futile human enterprise, and for that reason, it was to bring human strength and weakness upon itself. It criticizes one, but at the same time all, undeveloped countries, peoples conformism and ignorance. This film has a deep exploration of the main character’s state of mind, which is also very present in its original text, Inconsolable Memories, written by Edmundo Desnoes. This is very interesting from a cinematographic point of view, given that when we watch the movie, it is almost as if we were experiencing everything from Sergio’s perspective, the main character. He is a man who wont leave all that he despises so much for the precise reason that if one hates is because one loves. Like the valsesillo criollo says, “Odiame por piedad yo te lo pido, odiame sin medida ni clemencia, odio quiero mas que indiferencia, porque tan solo se odia lo querido.” As he stays in his Havana apartment and he is trying to cope with the present situation of the country, there is a similar battle going on within his mind and the movie does a great job of translating that from the book to the screen.

Borges and Bertolucci on the traitor and the hero

The true relevance of the level of faithfulness in adaptation is, in my opinion, trivial compared to other aspects of the piece. There are several evident differences between “The Theme of the Traitor and the Hero” and The Spider’s Stratagem, though most of them fall more on the technical aspect.

Although the plot is basically the same, their approach on it is very different. Borges’ story seems like a document with a certain sense of abstraction where we are shocked by the fine line that divides the hero and the villain, while The Spider’s Stratagem is more of a personal story. They both focus on this main topic that “The Theme of the Traitor and the Hero” proposes; yet Bertoluccis’ film has this element of the personal path of the main character in his film. Athos is both in search and in the shadow of his dead father. This idea I find very interesting, for it has been a recurring theme through the history of humanity. Starting in texts as ancient as the Genesis or much of Greek literature, the idea of a repetitive fate comes up, and in this case Athos is searching for the truth of that previous destiny, and simultaneously he is been haunted by it. This happens to such an extent that at the end of both pieces one could even argue if the main character himself is a traitor or a hero, because of the decision of holding back the dark truth about the murdered man.

Regardless, the main idea of both pieces is the meager difference that lies behind the curtains of a traitor and a hero. In the Scorsese film Taxi Driver this is very evident, as Robert De Niro, in the private life of his character, portrays a total villain, and ends up in a pedestal, while he missed dark fate of jail or death by an inch. To a certain extent all works of art are nothing but an expression of one side of the artist, a mere projection of the inner complexity of a human, and the truth is that we all have a traitor and a hero inhabiting our minds.