Natural Born Killers - Oliver Stone (1994)

We are becoming a society more interested in crime and scandal than in anything else - more than in politics and the arts, certainly, and maybe even more than sports, unless crime is our new national sport.

"Natural Born Killers" is an exercise in cinematography; a course, or more precisely: a seminar. I don't know of any other artistic manifestation in which at least half of what happens here with the image takes place. Dozens of filters and lenses changed within seconds, the most bizarre angles alternating in a dizzying succession in a changing image format (18 !!! different)...Supplemented or underlined passages through animation, or stroboscopic flashback bursts, narrated "film in film," but in a sitcom style or in that of TV commercials...

Indeed, we are witnessing an impressive demonstration of power and a megalomaniacal waste of resources, in a psychedelic production with a captivating story that contains at least four exceptional acting performances (Woody Harrelson, Juliette Lewis, Tom Sizemore, Tommy Lee Jones). Tommy Lee Jones built his role in the film inspired by Molière's play "The Bourgeois Gentleman," investing heavily in this creation that he wanted to be a satire against those who aspire to undeserved positions in the social order.

For photographers, "Natural Born Killers" is a kind of reportage from paradise...or maybe a workshop where you can see a wide range of professional equipment and techniques at work.

For sociologists, it's the drama of the communications era, and one of the consequences of media coverage is inertia. A couple of killers, Mickey and Mallory, do not kill out of alienation, material needs, revenge, envy, unresolved complexes, or out of love for weapons ("trigger happy") or passion for violence. Nope. They kill for popularity and glory. A witness is always left alive to tell the horrors, and when reporter Wayne Gale (Robert Downey, Jr.) develops a true Stockholm Syndrome, he suggests the power of how transmitted information works.

Old Indian: Once upon a time, a woman was picking up firewood. She came upon a poisonous snake frozen in the snow. She took the snake home and nursed it back to health. One day the snake bit her on the cheek. As she lay dying, she asked the snake, "Why have you done this to me?" And the snake answered, "Look, bitch, you knew I was a snake."

There are over three thousand cuts in 118 minutes of projection, five times more than in a normal feature film. The bombardment of frames (each one more interesting than the last), overlaid with a busy and alert soundtrack, surprisingly keeps the production within the limits of a beneficial calm for the plot, through magic accessible only to the great masters, Oliver Stone confirming once again his membership in the global elite.

With a well-crafted project, but also with a lot of spontaneity, Natural Born Killers is still a film that came to life only on the set... or more precisely in the post-processing room, because the recordings that lasted only 56 days needed 11 months to become what can be seen on the screen. I say it came to life on the set because the initial script (by Quentin Tarantino) had to undergo two subsequent rewrites (which considerably moved away from the original version), and important adjustments were constantly made, with the ending being the result of a last-minute mood.

This film should not be seen under poor conditions. To do justice to the crystal-clear quality of the projection and the costly investment in tournaments, it is necessary to have professional equipment (at least a Blu-ray and an HD, there), the ideal being a digital projection room, because otherwise, it would be a great shame... In any case, one viewing is not enough; I recommend at least two: the first focused on the effects, the second strictly on the narrative...