Inspired by a Jorge Luis Borges story, Bertolucci's political thriller follows a young man who returns to the sleepy village where his father was murdered, only to be drawn into a web of memories and mysteries where past and present-and truth and fiction-are eternally entangled. In a crumbling town of “madmen and old men, and old madmen,” a young man arrives; he is the son (and lookalike) of a revered anti-fascist hero assassinated years earlier by mysterious forces. Lured back by his father's widow, the son begins to investigate the murder, but certain individuals would prefer that the past remain undisturbed; others, however, would prefer that it be repeated. “In this town, you decide to do something and find out it has been foreseen by others,” realizes our hero; here, all paths lead back to their beginnings, and everything-politics, heroism, even identity- has already been written. Lush with Vittorio Storaro's warm, sensual images, The Spider's Stratagem is “possibly Bertolucci's simplest and most glowing work” (Judith Crist).