The Absolution of Roberto Acestes Laing by Nicholas Rombes Read Free Book Online Page B

bodies.’
    “Hector pauses and sort of pulses on the screen, as if there was a strobe light inside of him,” Laing says.
    “‘The bodies, Hutton?’ Hector more says than asks.
    “‘The ones out there,’ Hutton replies, pointing weakly at the camera, which means of course that he’s pointing at Aimee and me, us and our world on the other side of the screen, or wall I should say, the white wall of my cramped library office where we were projecting the film.
    “There must have been missing footage because the movie cuts—cuts as if slashed across the eye with a razor—from that moment to a shot depicting Hector, who has left the car and is running down the boulevard. The film jumps to life in a new, revolutionary sort of way, the colors more vibrant (even though it’s night), the camera movement more aggressive.
    “‘Follow me! Hutton!’ he screams. Hutton starts the car, turns on the headlights, follows Hector as he runs, impossibly fast it seems, faster than any movie camera can follow, down the boulevard, his white suit glowing like phosphorous, until he comes upon another man, also dressed in white, also running, and Hutton trying to follow as they cut through quiet side streets and down dark alleys, in Hutton’s mind a slow realization blossoming (though again I don’t remember how exactly the film conveyed this) that he is being led into some trap, somecircumstance from which there will be no escape, and the longer he follows Hector and the Hector look-alike—now indistinguishable in the night in the uncertain glow of headlights—the more trouble he’s in, the deeper into some metal-melting maze, and that is why, at the last moment, Hutton turns the wheel in the opposite direction of the men he’s following, makes his way back to the familiar highway, and drives in escape-mode at impossible speeds. This part is shot from the backseat, where Hector had been sitting. The highway is blocked by flashing lights—either a terrible accident or a police blockade—and so Hutton takes an exit ramp that leads onto a service drive and then into a neighborhood littered with broken glass bottles. We hear an explosion or a gunshot and quickly realize, at the same time Hutton does, that one of his tires has blown. He stops the car beneath a tilting streetlamp and then notices that all of them are tilted in the same direction and when he gets out of the car he realizes why: the wind here is so strong and steady that over the years the street lamps have slowly bent, and his coat blows up over his head from behind, blinding him for the few moments it takes for there to be a slow dissolve from the backseat of the car to an angle and position across the street from Hutton. The style has shifted again and now the camera movements are slow and steady and as he stands there in the night beneath the streetlight we—but not Hutton—can see the man in white, who is either Hector’s doppelganger or else a person who is similar to but not quite a duplicate of Hector, crawling (it seems like he’s crawling) in the deep-focus, back part of the frame, behind Hector. Aimee can’t help laughing at this point, and I remember that somehow her laughter broke the movie’s spell for me right then and there, so that the anarchic, maniacal chase that followed seemed somehow to be a letdown, even though, thinking back on it now, talking with you, it was a remarkable sequence.
    “So, Hutton turns suddenly, as if alerted to Hector’s double by the implied audience watching the film, and takes off on footafter him, the camera tracking along smoothly behind and sometimes beside him like that remarkable opening shot from Touch of Evil . It’s only after around five or six minutes of Hutton running and breathing hard as if right on the heels of Hector’s double that we realize that Hector’s double is actually nowhere in sight. What has Hutton been chasing all this time? He leans over to catch his breath, the palms of his hands on his