Caesar Must Die

8/27/2022

The great irony of Cesare deve morire is that, while the conspirators who assassinated Julius Caesar ostensibly did so in hopes of freedom and found only death, the prisoners who stage a performance of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar in this film are able to set themselves free through the liberating power of storytelling – at least until the curtain falls. The movie certainly takes its own liberties, shot documentary-style in a “high-security prison” where the guards are invariably conspicuous by their absence – though one of the best scenes has a trio of them materializing briefly to debate whether Antony is “obliging” or “a son of a bitch” –, and the inmates get along famously except for a quick quarrel which is resolved off-screen (once again without the guards’ intervention). And ye