Borges and Bertolucci

While Bertolucci is probably correct in noting that The Spider’s Stratagem is an exact adaptation of what he calls the “mechanism,” that is, the basic plot structure, of “The Theme of the Traitor and the Hero,” the film obviously exhibits significant differences when compared with the source story. As Robert Stam notes in “Beyond Fidelity,” all adaptations, even those attempting absolute faithfulness to their literary source, must necessarily make innumerable modifications on the original given the different requirements and characteristics of the different media. While Borges at the start of “The Theme of the Traitor and the Hero” imagines alternative versions of his story, Bertolucci’s changes go beyond those envisioned by the Argentine author, those necessary to flesh out such a concentrated text, and those required by medial difference.
The first significant modification made by Bertolucci is the setting of the story. Borges, in his story, argues that “The Theme of the Traitor and the Hero,” which in his telling takes place in Ireland in the 1820s, could just as well have been set in “Poland, Ireland, the Venetian Republic, some South American or Balkan state.” According to its author, the key to the story is that it is set “in an oppressed and tenacious country.” For Borges, therefore, the story implies a colonial or neocolonial situation, in which a national majority is oppressed by a minority whether foreign or domestic. Obviously, the Ireland of the story, oppressed by the English but actively resistant to foreign domination, fits Borges’s description perfectly.
Borges could have easily included 19th century Italy which, as we all know, fought against Austria in order to achieve it its unity. It is much more difficult to insert fascist Italy, the setting of Bertolucci’s film, in the series proposed by Borges. While an understandable choice given Bertolucci’s then radical politics, the fact is that, as he shows in the movie, fascist Italy of the 1930s was not a period when an a national majority resisted an oppressive minority. The anti-Fascists in the movie are a handful of people. Even if it is not clear that most of the population of Tara, the fictional town of the movie, support the fascists, the latter are obviously more than the resistance. If in Borges’s story, “Ireland idolized Kirkpatrick” and “hundred of actors collaborated with the protagonist,” in Bertolucci’s film, Athos will become a local hero only after the defeat of fascism.
But perhaps the major difference between “Theme of the Traitor and the Hero” and The Spider’s Stratagem resides in the fact that the film is focalized through Athos fils. This helps explain why in the historical flashbacks the anti-fascist clique are portrayed by the same actors who play them in the “present” scenes. This makes the flashback less like historical representations than dreamlike versions of the events uncovered by Athos.
The anti-realistic, even oneiric, staging of the flashback is, in my opinion, directly linked to the psychoanalytic undercurrents that run throughout the film. In fact, the film can be seen as a modified oedipal narrative. Athos fils embarks on a “search for the father,” but upon learning the truth that he was a traitor, is unable to take the next step and kill Athos père’s reputation, etc. There is even the possibility that he could end up living an alternative version of his father’s life—Draifa wants him to stay with her niece and supervise the lands.
Again the contrast with “The Theme of the Traitor and the Hero” is noticeable. While Ryan, who discovers the truth about Kilpatrick, the “hero and traitor,” is his great-grandson, it is not clear whether filial loyalty or, more probably, a refusal to destroy the reputation of a national hero is what leads him to repeat the myth. (Is this is why the story claims that this “perhaps, was foreseen”?) Granted that Athos, also does not tell the truth about his father, but here Bertolucci’s psychoanalytic spin on Borges’s “mechanism” transforms what is a comment about the social need for myths into an exploration of psychological mechanisms.
Curiously, this aspect of “The Theme of the Traitor and the Hero” has been present in a few major movies. The first filmic exploration of this “theme of the traitor and the hero” I am aware of is John Ford’s Fort Apache (1948), where Captain York (John Wayne) validates the whitewashed myths created around Colonel Thursday (Henry Fonda), a version of Custer. Ford would return to the topic in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962). In this film, Ranse Stoddard (James Stewart) makes a political career out of having shot the Liberty Valance, even though , in reality, it was Tom Doniphon (John Wayne) who had killed the ruffian. A more recent, though less systematic, exploration of this topic is found in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight (2008), when Harvey Dent’s criminal actions are blamed on the Batman so as not to damage the former’s reputation as a hero.