For some reason of complicated theological explanation, “Thou shalt not kill” occupies a place that is not entirely worthy, not even respectable, in the order of the Commandments of God’s law. In the middle of the table, between the obligatory honor of parents and the warning against adultery, is the sin that has brought so many sleepless nights to many of the characters in David Fincher. “Don’t ask me why. If anything, do it to Hitchcock. The drama is there”, comments the director himself if he is questioned about his fondness for tracking the mind of the one who kills, of the one who kills a lot.
‘The Assassin’, his latest film presented with full honors in Venice, is basically what Tarantino calls a ‘revengematic‘. Or almost, since it is not that he takes revenge on anyone, but rather arbitrates the conditions of possibility so that no one insists on taking revenge on him. And it is a chronicle of revenge, as is the norm in the author, with a precision, a rigor, a sense of the times and a visual and plastic display that, in effect, is scary. Can the most immoral of acts (or the fifth most harmful, if we respect the order of the top 10) respond to the strictest work ethic? The answer is yes. And, of course, that is quite disturbing. And even discouraged.
Based on the graphic novel written by Alexis Nolent (aka Matz) and illustrated by Luc Jacamon, and with a script by Andrew Kevin Walker (that is, the person in charge of the totem ‘Seven‘), the film follows in the footsteps of a man convicted of a fatal mistake. Michael Fassbender, in which it means his return after a time off, he gives life to the hit man of the title who one bad day, because of nothing more than chance, makes a mistake. Of course, it is not the same to be wrong in the daily balance of a mortadella sandwich shop, for example, than in a trade so persecuted even by Moses himself (there is no commandment “You shall not add and subtract in vain”). Immediately afterwards, the organization (so to speak) takes action on the matter and the clock begins to count (or count better) against the protagonist. When his wife is attacked, it’s time to put things in her place: revenge from before (or something similar) arrives.
Fincher’s proposal brings the audience back to the more orthodox Fincher (if such a thing ever existed). After ‘Lack‘, a film so fieryly personal that it ended up in a universal work, the man who in 1999 put the same Mostra that he is now revisiting against the ropes with ‘Fight Club’ insists on his conception of cinema as a surgical intervention. Actually, the film is not only the chronicle of revenge, it is a patterned, exquisite and insanely precise mechanism to measure and even make sense of time. In addition to a cloudy reflection on the work ethic. As it is.
Indeed, the man bent on tracking down what’s been going through the minds of serial killers since before ‘Zodiac‘ a ‘Mindhunter‘ going through the same ‘Seven‘, back and forth, now stops at what is in the diary of a risky profession. And what appears there is scary. It scares the great rigor, resilience capacity (whatever this is), concentration and, why not, talent (let’s summarize it in work ethics) that needs the most immoral of professions.