Tony Manero must have had a violent upbringing where he learned the only way to succeed was to beat the hell out of anyone who was more prosperous than he. He lived in Chile at the time of Pinochet and lives the fantasy of being a dancer like Travolta in the days of Grease and Saturday Night Fever. He lived out his fantasy by running around with a white suit waiting for an occasion to wear it as Revolt did. In the meantime he caused a few deaths in order to obtain the means to build a dance floor out of glass; hardly the same stuff that glowed beneath the dancing feet of his Hollywood friends.
The backdrop is dramatic enough. Tony aggressively seeks any means to get he money for his dance floor, wood isn't enough especially in the poor place he has decide on, to dance like his American idol. Manero would frequent a Chilean movie house and mouth the words that would come out of his screened friends but in the end it seemed to be a struggle to get ahead of his peers, to be different from the rest. This was part of the subtext lying underneath the fulfillment of his aspiration to be like those Hollywood favourites but he had to escape the malicious environment he set himself in.
The movie has a hint of being a historical commentary on the period, is graphic n some parts and could use better editing in others especially during the violent moments where one wants to know how the hero came across a dead near a railway yard. One realizes he has been involved in drug dealing but wants to know at what level. In other words the editing should have been smoother and one really has to know how to use a jump cut to make it effective, otherwise the viewer things he is missing some necessary detail, when he is not.
Oddly enough the environment he pitted himself against would be subliminally stronger always baiting him to work harder to reach his goal through elicit means and that meant killing the obstacles along the way. This is a movie of desperation, of killing the hero figures of the past and those who stood between Tony and celluloid success. Being red in Pinochet's did not mean having the means to get where he wanted to and one can see the aversion to socialism through the way Tony's dancing troupe handed their material needs. How does one become a hero by peddling glass bricks for a make shift dance floor in a disordered social system? Certainly not by showing any emotion to the women you desire according to the hero here. They were all looking for a way out of the turmoil, so maybe it helped to dream and believe that Tony would be their passport to a better future.
