Stealing Beauty was the story of an initiation to life set in a privileged setting; from the Graysons’ golden hermitage, in fact, one could see the dissonances of the outside world: the workers raise the metal tower of the television repeater that distorts the aesthetic Tuscan landscape, some African prostitutes wait for clients on a road in the middle of the countryside. The Siege perhaps takes inspiration from this last note but does not mark a return by the director to the exotic atmospheres of the “trilogy of elsewhere”. Bertolucci insists instead on the symmetries and structures that we have found in other works; first of all, the condition of the besieged-besieger. The image of the volcanic crater surrounded by water that forms the backdrop to the title and, immediately after, the shot of the indigenous singer sitting in front of a large tree project the story of Shandurai and Jason – which has not yet begun but has its roots in this prologue – onto a symbolic and mythical horizon. The red circle of the volcano rises from the blue liquid. This is the two-tone color that the director has now transformed into a stylistic constant. The volcano presumably represents Africa, which in the initial scenes is characterized by primary emotions, by a violence that reflects the colors and lights: alive, therefore raw and sensual. The water that surrounds the volcano is instead a European water, a Western fluid spread around the Black Continent. On an economic, psychological and historical level, the first world imprisons the third - that proud red but extinguished crater - although the latter sends a message and a warning to the West entrusted to the incomprehensible verses of the singer. The native reappears at times in the film to symbolize the painful voice and the concrete threat of Africa. He who besieges is besieged: Western society has imposed various types of colonization on Africans who now press at the borders and come from the same sea used by Europeans for their expeditions of conquest. One continent presents itself, in relation to the other, as a besieged island and besieging water; one island has its own habits and customs that are obscure to the other. If we do not understand the meaning of the African song (although the tones express the meaning of the text well) with symmetry Shandurai declares to Kinsky: "I do not understand you and I do not understand your music". From the vast socio-cultural conflict we then move on to the private, to the dispute between individuals linked to different worlds. With his usual finesse the director underlines this aspect of the story in a simple and intensely effective scene. Kinsky composes and plays, she begins to vacuum around the piano: two irreconcilable yet complementary pieces of music. The man reassures her: the vacuum cleaner does not bother him. She continues her work and at a certain point the pressing language of the notes takes hold of her, fascinates her; she stops her work and smiles: from the condition of besieger she has gone to that of a happy and consenting besieged. Will the infatuation last?
