Sleepers

Sleepers is an American film carried out by Barry Levinson and left on the screens in 1996. It is founded on the novel éponyme of Lorenzo Carcaterra.

Synopsis

To Manhattan, in the district of Hell' S Kitchen, four boys steal the carriage of a salesman of hot dog with which they kill a passer by accidentally. Condemned to a sorrow of rectification in a prison for minors, they will undergo there on behalf of the guards of multiple tortures and sexual abuses. Eleven years later two of them, become gangsters, cross by chance one of of torture of the time and are avenged by killing it. The two others become notable will defend them.

Analyzes

A great number of references without to rock in the overload, a dominating place left to the actors and a scenario which succeeds in not weakening in addition to measurement… All this certainly made Sleepers one of the most important films of the realizer Barry Levinson.

The first role goes to Robert De Niro, priest, basketball player and false-witness on a subject which literally makes it melt in tears. It justifies all the narrative structure of film, making it lead to what could resemble a happy end , as it is of setting for the Hollywood studios. And it is undoubtedly the major topic of work: pretenses, unvoiced comments and the lies, which make it possible to present scenes to the dialogs retracted by the music, which make it possible to affirm that one can “love all the beings as long as they do not speak” and who allow Brad Pitt “to lose a lawsuit gained in advance”. This last is shown besides most convincing among the four principal characters of this history, the supporting roles being here capital, of Dustin Hoffman with Vittorio Gassman and Kevin Bacon.

Because beyond constantly maintaining a variation between what is said and what is thought (except obviously in the pious places and vis-a-vis their representative), this film is tried to reveal what each one can hide behind its word, to unearth what conventions, omnipresent in Hell' S Kitchen, the reformatory, and even with the confessional, at the time of the first scene where the children replace the priest, hide at the bottom of each one of oneself. The only place where the word seems to be released is initially with the court, where in spite of what the truth is known as emerges from the handling which is worked out there, until of Niro the opposite comes to prove to us: does it do that for better serving the truth - to know to reveal the true character of the victim - or for better adapting it - considering than a murder remains always a murder and than another means of making burst the maltreatment undergone by the children was to exist well?

Opposition of paperboards of credits final, where the American authorities deny obviously in block the facts whereas the scenario writer seems to regard them as realities, leaves moreover on this faintness without solving it. And the dilemma comes then from what none of these children can express in another way its torments interior: one of them tries well to draw but does not seem there to find great comfort, the social success of both others do not bring to them therefore quietude that Brad Pitt seeks until the end, or at least what one really sees, without considering the last remarks of the voice-off, and even the of torture one must wait to appear like witness, whereas nothing predisposed it there, to arrive to this Catharsis .

To concentrate thus on the events of the lawsuit, the film occults blow a share of psychology of make, since at almost any time the after-effects left by the acts of torture are not really evoked, their résurgescence is done only by already shown images, or almost, and nowhere does not see one the least trace of their unconscious being expressed. As if the realizer could not show what the characters cannot express but who is quite present: it is necessary well to explain such desire of revenge, legitimate within sight of cruelty practiced by Kevin Bacon and its pars, which is however justified with the screen only by the social failure which follows, of two of the kids and by the two ultimate sentences of Brad Pitt on its interior anguishes. The film chooses anything to show these introspections explicitly, preserving kind a force of suggestion bleat exploited, but one does not remain with impunity, during fifteen years, with such driven back memories without that not torturing the unconscious one. How the narrator could still be afraid of the black if not?

Data sheet

Distribution

Rewards

  • Nomination with the Oscars for the best music

Around film

  • not to confuse with the original title of the film Woody and the robots ( Sleeper ) of Woody Allen in 1973.

See too

  • Card Allociné
  • Card IMDb

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