Brilliant adaptation (and improvement) of the Moravia work, with the entire structure revolving around Plato's Republic added by Bertolucci. As a meditation on both tyranny and the tyrannized, it is unsurpassed in cinema.
The center of the film explicitly discusses the cave image in the Republic (the topic of Marcello's abortive thesis when he was Quadri's student). But that is not all: a reading of the immediately relevant sections of the Plato will make it obvious that it provided Bertolucci with a stream of imagery for the film. A reading of the entire work will reveal an even greater stream, largely taken from the discussions of tyranny and the tyrannic man (who, like the philosopher, is the same both dreaming and awake). In turn, this all ties in nicely with both Spider's Stratagem and Before the Revolution, among others of his films.
The center of the film explicitly discusses the cave image in the Republic (the topic of Marcello's abortive thesis when he was Quadri's student). But that is not all: a reading of the immediately relevant sections of the Plato will make it obvious that it provided Bertolucci with a stream of imagery for the film. A reading of the entire work will reveal an even greater stream, largely taken from the discussions of tyranny and the tyrannic man (who, like the philosopher, is the same both dreaming and awake). In turn, this all ties in nicely with both Spider's Stratagem and Before the Revolution, among others of his films.