From Bruce, to Zack Snyder, with respect and affection.

December 20, 2017.

From Bruce to Mr. Snyder.

Dear Mr. Snyder (i would like to call you by the first name, someday, in case you allow me), first of all, i want to leave my condolences for your pain - not everyone understands pain like we carry in silence , while there is work to do and while it is ours the obligation to realize it. Accept my solidarity and my recognition for your integrity and moral strength, throughout this year.

Now, allow me to speak of (and then tell you my gratitude for) your films, not just the recent ones, which have touched my life and soul.

Yes, soul... Few people noticed (and those who noticed, they did so in an elegant and reverent silence) that their vision of me intended to analyze my soul and show it to the world and, let's face it, it is neither an easy nor beautiful... You know - now even more - how much of loss and sacrifice Life has imposed upon me (if there is a God out there, well... A part of it seems to have sympathy for the things that monsters like Joker and Joe Chill impose to the other living). You (more than others who tried to talk about me through the door of the cinema) understood that I am not "beautiful to be seen in the light of dawn"... That my tortured soul would be "far better situated in a Greek tragedy "(as said by the PhDs who wrote that very interesting book, to which they gave the so-called" Batman and the Philosophy "- though i like to be taken seriously, as Clark knows very well).

Since i spoke in Clark, let me also praise the way you understood and portrayed it: that noble soul, but suffered; that paladin in blue and red (i liked his dark tones, too, for "The Man of Steel," Mr. Snyder.) A stronger blue and a red wine that reminds me a lot of what should or may have been the color of the cloak of that other boy who, in his thirties, left any interior and presented himself to the world, in his fullness of power, charisma and character, to try to change the face of this little globe... We both know him, so like Clark, did not have all the success he hoped for, and he could not even walk in peace between us...).

Well, i've said too much (which is not my way - you know). Christmas is coming, is not it?... He always makes me melancholy, and in these hours, the shadows of my mother and father cause me a more acute pain in his absence (at this time, I would exchange my nightmares with them, by the strange gifts with which John Constantine sees his dead - if indeed he sees them, in fact).

I hope that in your Christmas dinner, along with the children and affections that Life has allowed you to conquer, your soul be at peace, happy for the success of your vision of Art (about me Leonidas, about Rorschach, Mr. Manhattan, and your friends), your respect for the Seventh and for your characters - who, in you, find reverence similar to that of Joseph Campbell, JRR Tolkien, Stephen King, Bernard Cornwell, George RR Martin, JK Howling ... Will Eisner, Grant Morrison and Dave McKean, Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons, David Mazzucchelli, Frank Miller and Lynn Varley, Howard Chaykin and John Francis Moore, Lee Bermejo... Christopher Nolan and David S. Goyer ... (I always forget to quote someone, but I always think that if we were faithful, we had to mention a lineage that might have started in Homer and Sophocles and passed through Shakespeare, going to a lesser known one in English, called Ariano Suassuna...).

Forget the critics. They have never built anything of truly unforgettable value. The builders of the world, inside and outside of Art, are the ones constantly being criticized...

With affection and respect (from somewhere in Eastern Europe),

Bruce.