(ANSA) - VENICE, 02 SEPT - Sense of guilt, redemption, revenge and post-plot stress from Abu Ghraib where humanity was worth nothing and everything was full of feces, stinks, ferocious dogs, sweat and fear. But, as the title indicates, THE COLLECTOR DICARTE by Paul Schrader - in cinemas from tomorrow with Lucky Red - in this dark drama with Oscar Isaac, in the running this year for the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, there is obviously also gambling, the one that the protagonist, WilliamTell (Isaac) practices to live with that right detachment that derives from having frequented hell for a long time.
It all starts from the prison where Tell was locked up for being one of Abu Ghraib's torturers, or rather one of those photographed and thrown in the newspaper (the only ones to pay the price to justice). In jail, the former soldier has learned to count cards and once he is out he becomes unbeatable. Meet Cirk (Tye Sheridan), a debt-ridden young man seeking revenge against a common enemy. With the backing of a glamorous financier, La Linda (Tiffany Haddish), the ex-soldier takes Cirk to the casino circuit to lead him down a new path. But that boy, whom he adopted as an adopted, brings Tell right back to those ghosts of the past from which I didn't get rid of easily.
"In thinking about this film - says the legendary screenwriter of Taxi Driver - I was looking for characters with big responsibilities that society has forgiven, but who have not found forgiveness in themselves and Abu Ghraib is really something unforgivable".
The reconstruction of Abu Ghraib, Schrader then points out, "was very free, we created a labyrinth, something that was in our minds". Finally, the director on post-Afghanistan America: "The decline of my country is something that has always been expected of us". (HANDLE).