Tony Manero

The film, Tony Manero is a drama highlighting events of a 50-year old serial killer during a dictatorship period set in Santiago, Chile. The genre of Tony Manero can be described as a tragic autobiography with a hint of romance.

## Biography

The 2008 Chilean film Tony Manero, directed by Pablo Larraín, is about a 52 year-old man obsessed with John Travolta's character in Saturday Night Fever, set in Santiago 1978. Alfred Castro plays as Raúl Peralta, the main protagonist [1].

**Awards:**Tony Manero won the top prize at the 2008 Torino Film Festival and the Golden Tulip at the Istanbul International Film Festival. Tony Manero was also Chile's submission to the 81st Academy Awards for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film [1].

## Analysis

The genre of Tony Manero is a tragic autobiography with a hint of romance. Tragedy follows a trend:
investment, goal and enjoyment, and event. After the event phase, the tragedy veers off, and is followed by a phase of total
destruction. The protagonist, Raúl Peralta is the character that stays within the tragic loop which can be seen throughout

the progression of the movie.

The first phase, investment is the part in which the
character becomes slowly dedicated to either a person or thing. The investment
in this film, is Tony Manero’s love for dancing, and more specifically his
obsession with John Travolta’s character in Saturday Night Fever. Tony Manero
appears later in bars as the entertainment show by mimicking the same moves as
in the classic movie. He spends his waking hours practicing with others to
learn all of the Saturday Night Fever dance moves. He invests in time and
energy to continue to progress but goes against the moral code.

As Tony Manero becomes more dedicated to the movie, he
begins to warp morals by stealing and killing innocents and enjoys the process. This is a twisted way
of interpreting his emotions for dancing as romantic feelings. He becomes so in
love with the idea of dancing and winning the competition, he would do just
about any crime, and his immoral mind soon enjoys it. Crime in the city was
very common during this period of dictatorship with crooked cops, thieves and rebels.

Tony Manero’s first victim and event was an innocent, little old lady. A few boys had run past her on the street and dropped her groceries. Tony had saw this as an opportunity to strike. After picking up the groceries, she welcomed Tony in and watched a color tv, which at the time was expensive. He then murdered her in cold-blood, and took off with the tv.

In another event, Tony Manero saw a rebel trading information on a side street. The rebel had valuables, Tony Manero saw this as another opportunity, and followed him down an alley. The rebel noticed he was being followed and started running but then ran into the cops on the other side of a bridge. The cops shot him without hesitation. Tony Manero hid until he was clear to ransack the body. In this case, Tony Manero did not murder this victim, but would have given the stalking feeling you had when watching the film. The feeling you receive from understanding the Tony’s motive and behavior is called the structure of feeling. There are other scenes within this film that show Tony Manero greedily eyeing someone and the scene abruptly ending. We can infer that those people are victims of Tony based on the structure of feeling.

It is the day of the Saturday Night Fever dance competition and Tony Manero competed with 5 other men. Tony Manero was the oldest competitor and had a harder time with some of the moves, but spent a lot of time perfecting the moves of John Travolta and won second place. After the competition, Tony Manero has spent so much time on dancing, he isn’t sure what to do next. His motivation for dancing ends and now he had no family to go home. This is most tragic part of this movie. At the end, Tony Manero will be stuck in this loop of destruction and loss.

## References

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony\_Manero\_(film)

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaX2bavetsA

[3] https://cocamusic.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/tonymanero.jpg?w=700