Salo - 120 Days of Sodom

Salo, or The 120 Days of Sodom

With his "Salo, or The 120 Days of Sodom," director Pier Paolo Pasolini gives us depravity to the nth degree. Nine teenage boys and nine teenage girls are taken prisoner in a majestic villa in 1944 Fascist Italy. With the source material being the Marquis de Sade's tome, we pretty much think we have an idea of what we are in store for. Yet it is more graphic than that, given that the images are celluloid as opposed to just words on a page. Roughly, the first third of the film was fine (a relative term); the second, nauseating; and the third, with a horrendous final ten minutes, almost unbearable. The things I liked about Salo have to do with the first third, especially at the beginning when three young men try to flee on bikes their future captors; you can see the fear in their faces. Or the young lady who mourns the mother who died trying to save her from what is going to be a terrible fate. I enjoyed the sets and the costumes, an elaborateness that, coupled with the grotesqueness, put me in mind of Peter Greenaway's equally disgusting, but for me more gorgeous and far more watchable, The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover. Those bits of appreciation are more old-school cinematic, I suppose. The scenes with the human waste and the scenes of violence are ones that I found more difficult, despite the always beautiful cinematography. Pasolini is tough for me, and admittedly the more modern Teorema (with its 1960s bourgeois family affected by an enigmatic visitor) is the work of his that I most esteem. December 20, 2008

Damaged Disc

I am writing this review to inform buyers to check their disc upon arrival. When I received my disc, there were multiple deep scratches located on the disc. It didn't affect the playability of the movie but it's disappointing considering that this should have arrived in brand new condition. It seems to have been damaged by the manufacturer/packager and not by amazon. I am currently in the process of returning this movie which is quite a hassle considering I'm in Iraq at an APO adddress. December 15, 2008

Sad Sick Shocking Hateful Powerful

I held off watching Salo for a long time. In fact, I was going to skip it altogether in my quest to watch every Criterion Collection movie. I finally watched it, fully expecting it to make my head explode. Well, it didn't make my head explode but I did gag several times during the forced merde eating scenes. The movie filled with nudity and sex but is quite possibly the least erotic movie I've ever seen. If anything, the movie is anti-eroticism.

There are various interpretations of the movie. The consensus seems to be that Pasolini was trying to portray the horrors of facism. Actually, I can't help but see a bitter rant against the darkest impulses of mankind. In Salo, we see the inmates running the asylum. The crazy people, made even crazier with power, torture the sane in a world turned morally upside-down.

That Salo is appalling is obvious. It is meant to be. Few mainstream movies are this blunt in thier intention to offend. The movie watches as two hours of pure undistilled hate and evil. The movie is extremely well-made. Most movies, I can't remember an hour after seeing. Powerful and provacative, Salo has stayed with me for weeks. I'm not giving Salo five stars because I enjoyed it. Who would enjoy this besides violent pedophiles? Sometimes, there's more to watching and understanding a movie than a simplistic enjoyed/dislike evaluation. Salo cannot be judged by a thumbs up or down. I'm giving it five stars because it was well and bravely made and itmade me think and feel and react. December 11, 2008

Good, Good, Good

I,ve wanted to see this sence the sixties. It was more than I expected.
Friends who study Psychology Love it. December 6, 2008

An Empty Exercise

Many reviewers are basing their opinions on Pasolini's reputation and just assuming that because Pasolini made a number of masterpieces that this too must somehow merit our attention.

After having viewed several of Pasolini's other films I have to say that this is his weakest. The film's reputation (or notoriety) has little to do with the actual substance of the film. If the film is critiqued according to the normal criteria of film criticism it would have to be judged a failure for it simply fails to engage the viewer. The most glaring reason for this and the most glaring weakness of the film is its complete lack of three-dimensional characters. In fact there is no characterization at all. In the place of characters we have "authority figures" and "captives". But since there is very little that differentiates one character from the next there is no way to judge the psychological effects of this social experiment. The most that can be said for the film is that it is gorgeously filmed by an immensely talented cinematographer and that the decorous interiors (some interiors have been painted to resemble the interiors of classical Roman villas and others have been decorated with modernist art and furniture) do provide a luxurious backdrop and elegant contrast for what occurs in the foreground. But since the characters have very little individuality and are therefore interchangable the film itself simply fails to resonate as either a psychic or a political parable.

Granted, Pasolini's gifts as a filmaker are extraordinary. In his best efforts (ie Teorema starring Terence Stamp) he gives us highly individualized characters and with them he examines the psychology and psychopathology of class. In Salo Pasolini is examining various power differentials as well but since we do not know and therefore cannot really empathize with any character on either side of the power/powerless equation the entire thing remains an abstract exercise. Perhaps this emotional distancing was intentional and perhaps this was precisely the detached aesthetic that Pasolini was looking for but the resut is that the viewer is simply not involved in what is happening on screen. I suppose this is the pitfall of Artaudian & Brechtian theatre as well.

Many films of the sixties and early seventies were designed as assaults on establishment tastes and standards: Godard for one subverted conventional narrative techniques, Bunuel toyed with the social hypocrisies of the bourgeoisie, and Dusan Makavejev examined the body as a sight of social control as well as of resistance. But can a film be considered a success if it assaults everyone's tastes and standards? I suppose the answer could be yes, but only if it makes some point that it could not make in any other way. The film, I would argue, fails not because of what it shows but because what it shows simply fails to amount to anything.

December 1, 2008

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