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Films

The Dancer Upstairs

John Malkovich has made a clever movie about the hunt for a fat, cardigan-wearing philosophy professor with blood on his hands. Rich Guilfoyle watches The Dancer Upstairs.

John Malkovich’s directorial debut, The Dancer Upstairs, is based on Nicholas Shakespeare’s 1995 novel by the same name. Shakespeare’s own screenplay adaptation of the novel is inspired by the tale of Peru’s Shining Path leader Dr Abimael Guzman (aka Chairman Gonzalo). Guzman, a former philosophy professor at the National University of Huamanga in Ayacucho, Peru, is a Maoist – by way of Kant! In the 1960’s, Guzman hosted a pedestrian ‘Tuesdays-with-Abimael’ affair equivalent to a Monday night bowling league, for discussing political thought. In the 1970’s the group evolved into a civil activist organization called the Shining Path (aka Sendero Luminoso). By the mid- 1980’s, the dam of civility crumbled and the blood flowed.

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