Salo.
So, one of the preordered items that arrived at my door on Tuesday (along with Harakiri, plus Miramax's Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown for a terrific lineup) was Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom, the 1976 film by Pier Paolo Pasolini whose reputation precedes it. I decided to watch it in its entirety the same day (my first time ever seeing the film at all).
Knowing well ahead of time that it's pervasively explicit and graphic in its details (in imagery and language), helped a bit, though I still cringed a bit, especially at the violence. Personally, I think the graphic images are more unsettling in Salo than in most other films because it is portrayed more more realistically than in, say, your typical action flick or horror film. The lack of a musical soundtrack goes a long way toward maintaining that realism. (There's virtually no score through most of the film except a piano that is actually played in the story itself.) All the carnage of 300 doesn't compare with what happens in Salo.
In any case, the graphic content is put to very good use as the film uses them to make its main points (especially the corrupting, dehumanizing effects of power) extraordinarily well. It's not graphic just for the sake of being graphic (a lot of more mainstream pictures should take a lesson from it).
One trait of the film that struck me was its outward formalism and structure. First of all the film is organized into distinct sections, like the acts of a play on stage and its style is quite theatrical (in a classical way) in terms of how characters, objects, props, etc., are arranged within the set. Further with regard to its formalism, so much of the visuals are composed in a classical way, like old realist paintings and classical architecture would be. Many shots, especially wide shots, are strongly symmetrical. For me, this formalism and the setting of the action with its almost stately (though run down) architecture help make the events that occur within that setting even more horrific. And within that context, the story is driven by a strict formal procedure the characters in the story have established and follow. All of that helps render the bizarre torture the film portrays as formal, official and routine. Therein lies one of the most unsettling aspects of the film: that these characters have been corrupted to the point that subjecting unwilling people to such activities is, to the tormentors, merely routine -- i.e., normal and everyday.
Anyway, it's a remarkable film and I recommend it to anyone who can tolerate its explicitness.
I'd like to find out what other Pasolini films Criterion currently has (I'll check the studio's website). Who here has other Pasolini films (and other work) to recommend?
On a further note, I see Salo, judging from its very low spine number, has been in the Criterion Collection for a very long time. I like how Criterion doesn't shy away from releasing films that are controversial, profoundly unsettling, obscure or otherwise harder to sell and still provides those titles top-tier presentation quality.
Makes me want to watch (or rewatch) more of the "political" (or at least controversial) films in my library from Criterion: The Battle of Algiers. Carlos. The Times of Harvey Milk. Che. Hunger. In the Realm of the Senses. Fat Girl. Kes. If....
Last edited by BluPix; 10-08-2011 at 01:53 AM.
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