Crime — Volume 2: The machine comes out unscratched
Environment as antagonist, and a form that resembles the condition it describes.
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The volume
Here the world comes before the people and stands longer than they do. A city that promises everything to anyone who lands with nothing, a neighborhood recruiting children earlier and earlier, a warehouse where nobody knows anybody's name, a border where the rules are set aside for convenience, the head of a man that no longer holds anything. Inside worlds like these you can climb all the way up, tell yourself a bearable version of who you are, or stay decent until the last day: not one of the three routes leaves a scratch. When the credits roll, the machine is turning as before. One exit is granted in the whole volume, and it runs through telling. A writer finds here the antagonist with no face, environment as a force, and a form built to resemble the condition it describes.
The five films, and why they are here
Scarface
Rise and fall as the parable of a hunger built never to be satisfied: the world does not beat him in a fair race.
Memento
Editing that does to the viewer what the injury does to the protagonist: almost every scene arrives without its own backstory.
City of God
Twenty years, three generations and a neighborhood that keeps regenerating: how to tell a system instead of a criminal.
Reservoir Dogs
Remove the heist and keep everything else: loyalty as the highest value and, at the same time, as the fatal flaw.
Sicario
A competent lead made progressively ineffective: a defeat that never passes through a confrontation.
Inside the volume
- Introduction to the genre: the essay that binds the volume's five titles together and says what to watch for.
- Five analytical chapters, one per film, from the dramatic premise to the legacy of the work.
- Comparative glossary: thirteen or fourteen craft concepts, tested against these five titles.
- Over two hundred pages, in PDF and EPUB, in your account library.