Moment of Truth

Moment of Truth - Francesco Rosi’s 1965 Moment of Truth relentlessly refuses allegory, symbol, or, even social-economic themes. The movie is about a young man from a remote and impoverished village in Andalusia who becomes a great matador. He kills dozens of bulls on-screen and is borne on the shoulders of adoring mobs. In the end, a bull that he has pierced with his sword gores him so that he and the great bloody beast die simultaneously. The Technicolor film is shot with handheld cameras, alternating between very long vistas of the gore-stained arena and telephoto images that push you directly into the nauseating action. Nothing is staged for the camera: the non-actor playing the hero was himself a Spanish toreador of some renown and when a bull flips him on its horns or tramples him to the ground all of this is really happening. Alas, this is true for the bulls as well which are tortured until their flanks and shoulders become abstract expressionist canvases of pulsing blood and, then, stabbed through the heart and lungs. The film is replete with horrific images of the animals staggering in circles as they vomit blood and the savagery of the whole thing is astounding and nightmarish; one cameraman quit the set in protest at the “ravaging” of the bulls and, at times, the imagery approaches the obscene. There is something pornographic about the spectacle and you feel a little fouled by the picture, particularly since the movie doesn’t aspire to anything but documenting bull fights and the impoverished and lonely life of professional bullfighters. The only broader social circumstances are provided by bracketing images of religious processions which are almost as depressing and disturbing as the carnage in the sun-blasted arenas. The hero is a cipher. We see him casually running with the bulls in his hometown and watch his father engaged in some kind of primitive threshing operation that involves mules circling a track of grain endlessly – dad announces that the work will take “eight days,” something which the son perceives with horror. He flees the village for Barcelona and a routine of grinding, hellish physical labor. We are given a brief, but dispiriting tour, of Barcelona’s underbelly, see a spectacularly dismal flophouse with numbered cots in plywood cubicles (the proprietor leers with homosexual lust at the handsome young man), and there is a scene in a hideous-looking tavern-qua-brothel. This scene with avaricious and make-up-smeared whores is echoed by a later scene with suave film industry folks and an American starlet – everyone at this sophisticated party looks just as desperate and degenerate and miserable as the characters in the Barcelona whore-house. The hero acquires wealth and a manipulative manager, but there’s no evidence that he’s happy with his increasing fame or enjoys his work. In fact, he pleads with his manager to let him fight fewer bulls, and, after being gored badly, becomes increasingly terrified. His work is a Calvary that leads inexorably to his gruesome death. The matador’s fame and glory is paid for in the currency of his blood; the viewer is increasingly aware that the young man’s father was right when he said: “a man is happy if he can drink a glass of wine in his own house.” This film is minimalist. It eschews theme, or commentary of any kind on its gory subject matter. After the first 20 minutes, which are anthropological, the picture is mostly brilliantly shot bull-fights. But, I’m afraid, a little of this goes a long way.