Assassination of the United States

Just a few hours after he Luigi Maggione transferred from Pennsylvania in a Brooklyn prison, ABC aired a feature documentary pandemonium, which was immediately picked up by Hulu as the first episode of the series about "the secret life of the young man suspected of murdering Brian Thomson."

Movies have not been lagging behind life for a long time, but neither is reality behind the images on the screen.

Footage of a gun pointed at the back of the director of "United Heltaker" from the street cameras of New York does not differ much from the scenes from forge, just like the chanting of the inmates in Huntington, demanding Luigi's release while their cries are heard on television in a live broadcast from reporters outside the building, is more reminiscent of what will be seen in the cinemas than the usual scenes from the streets of the city on the slopes of the Appalachian mountains.

If they once existed, the boundaries between different dimensions of reality have been completely erased.

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SWAPED ROLES

Feature-documentary drama pandemonium (Manhunt: Luigi Mangione and the CEO Murder) begins in the days of innocence in 2016, when Manggione, as a student of the generation, gave the graduation speech, which is traditionally entrusted to the best, at the elite Baltimore school "Gilman". This is followed by his photos after going to the gym, fairytale scenes from hiking in California or surfing on Hawaiian beaches, until zen travels in Asia, only a few months before the December morning when he left the hostel in Amsterdam Avenue and headed for the Hilton. That Manhattan hotel was hosting an investor conference that keynote speaker Brian Thomson never made it to. The powerful head of America's largest health insurance company, who earned $10 million a year, was stopped on the street by bullets from Luigi's gun, made on a home 3D printer.

Mangione himself has never used the services of United Healthcare, a company that has made thousands of Americans unhappy by refusing to cover their medical expenses. The descendant of a prominent Maryland family shot on behalf of those who are begging for money on the GoFundMe platform in order to prolong their lives or that of their sick children, at one of the symbols of America that feeds on other people's suffering. In this reversal of roles, Brian Thomson, the son of a poor laborer from the wheat fields of Iowa, who, through public schools and mediocre colleges, climbed to the top of the corporate ladder, was judged a graduate of the prestigious Penn, a private university in Philadelphia older than the state of America itself, where studies ivy league the elite.

In a society deeply imbued with violence, in which motives and motivations are often not discernible, the film pandemonium it talks about a crime committed because of social injustice. It is a story about a murder that was not the result of anger, madness or mundane motives to acquire what one does not have, but represents a symbolic showdown with neoliberalism.

While in the traditional media, where certain norms are still respected, it was said that politics and ballot boxes, and not weapons, are the only way to resolve disputes, endless fields internet freed from moral restraints, followers of social networks celebrated an act of political violence directed against corporate America. Regardless of the laws and the law, there was never much sympathy or empathy for the suffering of those who participated in the tyranny of the people.

CULT OF renegades

Luigi Mangione did what many, in a moment of anger, said they would do, and his act captivated quite a few people.

The speed with which he becomes a kind of social icon can only be measured by the diligence of the screenwriter Power, so Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg will have a hard time proving his claims of "terrorism," given that Ludgi wrote in his notebook "that he doesn't want to kill innocent people." Such claims will not only turn the trial into a political theater, where the audience has already taken its side, because American culture itself has traditionally cultivated a kind of romanticized cult towards outlaws. The heroes of books, movies, songs and comics - such as Jesse James, Billy the Kid, Butch Cassidy, Jerome, Dillinger, Capone - were joined by a young computer expert.

Somewhat paradoxically, this assassination united America. Smiley emojis with tears of laughter, increasingly replacing words, were the typical reaction to the news of Thomson's death, regardless of whether they were left by those on the left or right of the ideological spectrum, whether they followed Ezra Klein or Joe Rogan. Luigi Maggione is a typical representative of what is called "dialogonalism" in recent theory, which syncretically absorbs from all sides what sounds acceptable. So, there is something in Rogan that Klein does not have, regular trips to the gym do not exclude taking hallucinogenic mushrooms, programming does not collide with meditation in front of Buddhist temples, nor does an extremely privileged social status make it impossible to be against a system that provides all the conveniences of life at the same time.

With a plot similar to ancient dramas, pandemonium says that some do not suffer because of their flaws or moral weaknesses, but precisely because they are better than others.

The hero of the film, Luigi Mangione, himself chose exile from a society whose values ​​he did not share. From the moment he got on his bike after the murder, to the last bite hash browns at McDonald's, it was completely clear to him that he was going to be arrested. People on the run from the police don't eat hash browns at restaurants in downtown Altoona; Joseph DeAngelo who was the inspiration for the series Mindhunter he hid for nearly four decades across America before they found him somewhere near Sacramento.

Maybe with time these things will be clarified, but the dramaturgical structure Power currently pressing one big "why". Why did Luigi Mangione take away someone else's life and destroy his own?

There is among those young and smart people of America some fatalistic non-acceptance of the world in which they live. They are often completely consumed by an idea in which they believe obsessively, wandering from town to town, as Luigi did in life and film, searching for some meaning. Something, as with all tragic heroes, who do not choose their fate but fate chooses them, led to the fact that immediately before the murder, he cut off all contact with close people and family, and no one knows why it happened.

And when a tragic plot exists in life itself, the producers did not need much skill to translate it into a dynamic film story, which raced with the development of events. Scenario for Chase it was written on the fly, like journalistic reports, while the shots were arranged in the studio at the speed with which news channels are edited, following the fast pace of the city where the film is set.

VIEW FROM THE WALL

After the murder, New York was under siege for days, and it continued during these post-holiday days. At each subway station, there are several armed policemen, wearing shoes that resemble the shoes worn by soldiers of the Yugoslav People's Army, carefully checking everyone who has gone into the night life.

There are no performances paying tribute to Luigi Mangione, as in Boston, but a part of the capital's famous club "Xanadu" dawned with blood-red walls similar to a poster Power. The main innovation in the capital was the performance of DJs in the narrow corridor in front of the toilet, where frantic dancers fight with those trying to get to the door of the desired room, while they are hit from all sides by the basses of Charli XCX and Kali Uchis. Whoever is brought here, should run as close as possible to the counter on the right, because that's the only place where there are no holes for trash that everyone is looking for, pushing each other.

Right there, somewhere on the wall, there is a sticker with the eyes and eyebrows of a twenty-six-year-old who believed that the world could be a better place for everyone - including the "United Heltker" and its users, who would not have to fear for their lives when they return from the underground of clubs. into the reality of New York streets.

If such a reality even exists.