Scarface (1983)

Many a film has its forte and in Scarface's case it's its claim to truth, classical, all ways barred, everyone falling into the same trap, thinking that once life could be cheated, but all angles have already been figured out, in this case by Oliver Stone.

He's not the only one, who has the banks holding all the strands in their hands, António Lobo Antunes has used that same moment of clarity in his Inquisitors' Manual, a novel that by all its differences is very similar in composition to Scarface.

But while we're seeing there a failed general of the Salazar regime depicted, here it's the story of Antonio Montana, a Cuban peasant stamped by a streak of cruelty making it to drug lord in the United States.

Fidel Castro opens the ouverture by making a point of systemic relevance: No los queremos, no los necesita.

Spat out by the socialistic harvesters of good will, Tony arrives in Miami, where he is however immediately detained, until he proves his worth as a hitman.

He will fall over his need to fancy himself noble, his friend Manolo over his reliance on charm, his boss over the idea that he could get a free lunch, if he's only sufficiently circumspect and his sister over trying to be family with her mother and brother.

And it's all true.

The world is all yours, but you have to follow the rules.

Take, what you want, but pay the price.

Only that's not, what anybody wants. The world should love us, shouldn't it?, by overlooking our shortcomings. And if only one time, we want that reassurance that our folly is being accepted. And if it isn't, where does that leave us?

We find ourselves asking for what world we were originally meant with our mistakes.

I do not allow for mistakes. Just like this world. And still - I always shed some tears, when I see this film. This is after all the place I'll be buried at. I may think that everything would be fine, if man wouldn't fool himself in the first place, but there's little room for hope for that ever to happen. Hope lies entirely in the containment of folly, in a mixture of preventing harm and letting the fool grasp early enough.

And who in this world would be above this?

Who could say that he's enjoying the world crushing the ill-conceived?

It's not the same as saying that the ill-conceived should be crushed.

God, it's disturbing that such films are being made. Has nobody eyes to see, ears to hear and a heart to feel? How else could they not set the standard?