It was love at first sight with "A Pure Formality," a real stroke of lightning. A strange gift resulting from a long sleepless night. It's completely different from my previous films, which were all based on a "story." This time I worked on a human predicament.
"A Pure Formality" was born from my own suspended state of mind between action and non-action, the "limbo" I lived in between films. The resolution on my indecision was a regenerating adventure.
Every new film I make is different from the previous one because I have a deep dislike for anything that could seem like a sequel or a remake of a successful formula. During the production of "A Pure Formality," I felt the refreshing sensation of dealing with total novelty and change.
The film has nothing to do with Sicily, or the South, a common aspect of my previous three feature films. I haven't dealt with the nostalgic themes that were so important in "Cinema Paradiso" and "Everybody's Fine." And most of all, it isn't a pessimistic movie, a characteristic that some say is particular to my vision of the world.
"A Pure Formality" is based on a very simple concept: human beings have an automatic self-defense mechanism that is very highly tuned. We have the ability to forget what we have done, as well as our responsibilities and commitments. What do we remember from the very beginning of our lives? Hazy elements that collect little by little in our memories...Wouldn't it be the same at the end of our lives? We cannot live remembering all the unpleasant elements of our existence. The bad experiences slowly disappear because of this self-defense mechanism.
"As years go by, painful memories accumulate. Memories drown men.
So as not to die of anguish or shame, men are eternally condemned
to forget the more unpleasant moments of their lives."
This quotation from Onoff is the heart of the movie. I extended this idea to the furthest extreme: What is the most painful thing that a man can do to himself? Commit suicide. If we admit that the self-defense mechanism exists, then the more painful our memories are, the easier it is for us to supress them. So suicide could be immediately forgotten.
I don't know if there is an afterlife, but there must be a consciousness of death between life and death. As Onoff says, quoting his teacher, "Two parallel lines can never meet. Still, we can imagine that there is a point that exists far off in space, a point so distant that the two lines might meet." This theme gave me the desire to make a film that people could interpret in many different ways.
I had to translate these themes into a very simple story. A man is suspected of homicide--he is a great writer, he has a profound understanding of people, but he still cannot escape from his own story. He is in this strange place, unknown, desperate, in front of a policeman who must solve this mysterious case. The commissioner doesn't try to solve the case for himself, but instead for Onoff's benefit. During this night, Onoff has to recover the memory of who he is and what he has done.
A lot of the information in the movie is communicated without words. The movie is full of clues which evoke many different themes: literary creation, art, the image that others have of you, the loss of identity. "A Pure Formality" explores people's fears of being questioned about things they have or haven't done, that they have or haven't forgotten. It's also about the collective memory loss of an entire nation's experience.
