There is something uncomfortably familiar in the way the modern individual handles the fractures that open within their routine. It’s not the extraordinary events that fully destabilize them, but rather their own inability to respond coherently, lucidly, and autonomously when confronted with the unpredictable. Even after closely examining their actions, it feels as though there’s always a higher — diffuse, yet relentless — authority demanding accountability. And this demand isn’t limited to concrete acts: it cruelly extends to omissions, silences, and quiet surrenders that daily life records as invisible guilt. Within this landscape, a constant fear sets in — that the future will be nothing more than an amplified repetition of the present, with cycles of powerlessness and repression disguised as normalcy.
In narratives that mirror this state of distress, man is often portrayed as a pawn on a board he doesn’t understand. His attempts to adapt verge on the ridiculous; his search for meaning is sabotaged by a world that stubbornly refuses to explain itself. When reality turns into a labyrinth ruled by forces beyond anyone’s control — political, moral, technological, or even spiritual — the ordinary person is crushed by a machinery that doesn’t even acknowledge his despair. Only a few, those who cultivate meticulous skepticism and a keen sensitivity to the surrounding decay, dare to resist. But even they remain vulnerable: their defiance is tinged with disbelief, and their gestures of revolt often burn out before leaving a crack in the edifice of institutionalized brutality.
The title “Beckett” is not merely a referential nod — it is a foundational choice that shapes the film’s core. It’s impossible to invoke that name without drawing upon the intellectual legacy of Samuel Beckett, a writer who turned humanity’s ontological misery into theatrical substance. The Irishman exposed the human being in its most destitute state — one that crawls beneath the shadow of a ruthless social order, which promises meaning but delivers only routine. For Beckett, the State is not merely a political organization: it is the ultimate metaphor for diffuse oppression, for the expectation of obedience in exchange for hollow promises of autonomy. In the Beckettian universe, freedom is a caricature, and the individual is pushed into active resignation — a futile effort to maintain the illusion of choice while feeding the very system that strangles them.
Ferdinando Cito Filomarino and Kevin A. Rice, in writing the screenplay for “Beckett”, didn’t attempt a simple update of absurdist theater — instead, they chose to transplant its logic into the present, where nonsense is no longer an artistic invention but the ordinary experience of any citizen. The reference to “Waiting for Godot” is more than an homage: it is a provocation. Beckett and April, the film’s protagonists, echo the emptiness of Vladimir and Estragon in their own way, not as mirrors but as direct descendants of a lineage of characters defeated before the first act even begins. By setting the story in a post-tourism Greece, where the scenic beauty contrasts with the hostility of interactions, the writers extract from the European landscape what it desperately tries to hide: its bitter nationalism, veiled racism, and chronic distrust of the outsider.
The persecution of the protagonist, portrayed with restraint by John David Washington, is not just a narrative device — it’s a symbol. A Black man, foreign, solitary, wandering, becomes the target of a seemingly senseless manhunt. It’s natural for the viewer to question the plausibility of the plot, especially considering the hospitable reputation of the Greek people. But this is precisely where the film deepens: it refuses the banal coherence of everyday accounts. Its logic is not sociological but existential. The brutality at play is not drawn from Greece’s recent history, but from the universal persistence of an intimate barbarism that resists any civilizing effort. By intensifying this strangeness, the film does not offer answers — it simply forces us to face, like a distorted mirror, the irrationality that runs through the fabric of normality.
Thus, “Beckett” is not a stylistic exercise, nor an attempt to impress with formal sophistication. It is a critical gesture, deeply aware of its philosophical roots, that transforms absurdity into a diagnosis of the present. Rather than offering comfort through easy narrative resolutions, it insists on the most unsettling question: what if none of this makes sense? What if the persecution is real only because the fear is real? By embracing that hypothesis as the engine of its narrative, the film deconstructs traditional action cinema and compels the viewer to confront what they most fear: the absence of control, the collapse of reason, and the gnawing suspicion that, in the end, no one is coming to save us. Not even Godot.
Film: Beckett
Director: Ferdinando Cito Filomarino
Year: 2021
Genres: Thriller/Drama
Rating: 9/10