Format: VHS from Augustana College Tredway Library through WorldCat on big ol’ television.
I have a strange history with my genealogy. I don’t have a great deal invested in my family’s past, but a few other people do. Several years ago, my aunt gave me boxes of genealogical material from my mother’s side of the family. I’m still not 100% sure why she gave it to me. Years before that, a distant relative started sending out a newsletter to everyone with the same last name containing tidbits of our ancestral past back to about 1640. So I know something of my family’s history through no effort of my own.
That’s relevant here, because La Strategia del Ragno (The Spider’s Stratagem) is a film about family history and more specifically about the skeletons that lurk in our ancestral closets. What starts out as a simple request becomes a long and tortuous path into hidden meanings, shady dealings, betrayal, and murder. Almost in spite of itself, La Strategia del Ragno becomes a film noir or an homage to same.
