With this, I only have one more Pasolini feature to go and I have seen all of them (the missing culprit being Accatone). Porcile does not represent Pasolini at his best. It's far too abstract and obscure. Two stories alternate, one taking place in a quasi-legendary time and one in modern times. The quasi-legendary scenes concern a young cannibal, some rapists and murderers. The modern sequence concerns some former Nazis living in Italy. One of their sons, played by French actor Jean-Pierre Leaud, is sick of the evil, bourgeois lifestyle he leads. At one point, since he lacks any ambition, he throws himself into an intentional coma. I don't get it, especially how the two parts work together. Still, as a Pasolini fan, I have to admit that it is a strikingly made film. I especially liked the scenes set in the past. Pasolini regulars Franco Citti and Ninetto Davoli (the only actor, I believe, who appears in both parts of the film, although I have no clue why) come along for the ride. Pasolini fans should certainly see it, others should avoid. 7/10.
20 Reviews
The pollution of ideas almost ruined this. Good film but hardly accessible.
Rodrigo_Amaro15 October 2012
"Porcile" is fine if you have the patience and the will to endure its lost and bizarre images or its strange deviate messages. Reactions about it will be mixed, rarely reaching some certainty, but the one that's definitely is that this is one of weakest films ever directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini. It's too pretentious, looks like his own version of Godard's "Week End" but less brutal, less gross yet more confusing in its speech. Both films deal with world going to its ending, total destruction all around and all hope lost, and Socialism seems to be the good alternative for our better sake. The directors of both films mixed their political speech in the middle of the controversial and shocking images.
Two stories form the whole: 1) one young man (Pierre Clementi) who has killed his parents and ate their flesh walks around from village to village after being sentenced to perish in the vast desert. The only thing he'll be able to do is to kill whoever show up on his way and then eat them too. That's the story of the young cannibal, marvelously presented without words (he only has one spoken line repeated towards the ending). Beautiful cinematography, scary and thrilling sequences in it. 2) this story, very talky and quite messy brings Jean-Pierre Léaud (who was also in "Week End") as the son of an German industrialist who can't connect with people, preferring the company of the pigs ("Porcile" translates to "Pigsty"). He tries some involvement with a girl (Anne Wiazemsky) but with no luck. And there's his father (Alberto Lionello) business deals with a former Nazi of name Herdhitze (Ugo Tognazzi) also businessman but a rival of his, who hasn't aged through the war years after successful plastic surgeries. Foggy speeches about life, politics, mankind are dissolved into this other story and it's very hard to form a whole idea.
They're apart in time but what they have in common? World going to an end, the destruction and corruption of societies, with everything out of control. Those are recurring themes in Pasolini works ("Teorema", "Salò" just to quote a few) but in here there isn't much going on to make them feel useful for all of us. This is a case that might look better in a book/screenplay/written work than filmed. The experience is distractive, confusing, rarely captivating even with the two known main stars, who had their voices strangely dubbed in Italian (I have my doubts about Pierre, I believe he really learned his lines in the other language). I like the film even though I can't connect with much of what's shown in it. The cannibal story is interesting; the one about the industrialist's son isn't all that much. The final result is chaos. Chaos in this problematic world that doesn't seem to get better. Well, at least in those predictions the master wasn't all that wrong.
Enjoyable but unsustainable for more than one view. 6/10
Two stories form the whole: 1) one young man (Pierre Clementi) who has killed his parents and ate their flesh walks around from village to village after being sentenced to perish in the vast desert. The only thing he'll be able to do is to kill whoever show up on his way and then eat them too. That's the story of the young cannibal, marvelously presented without words (he only has one spoken line repeated towards the ending). Beautiful cinematography, scary and thrilling sequences in it. 2) this story, very talky and quite messy brings Jean-Pierre Léaud (who was also in "Week End") as the son of an German industrialist who can't connect with people, preferring the company of the pigs ("Porcile" translates to "Pigsty"). He tries some involvement with a girl (Anne Wiazemsky) but with no luck. And there's his father (Alberto Lionello) business deals with a former Nazi of name Herdhitze (Ugo Tognazzi) also businessman but a rival of his, who hasn't aged through the war years after successful plastic surgeries. Foggy speeches about life, politics, mankind are dissolved into this other story and it's very hard to form a whole idea.
They're apart in time but what they have in common? World going to an end, the destruction and corruption of societies, with everything out of control. Those are recurring themes in Pasolini works ("Teorema", "Salò" just to quote a few) but in here there isn't much going on to make them feel useful for all of us. This is a case that might look better in a book/screenplay/written work than filmed. The experience is distractive, confusing, rarely captivating even with the two known main stars, who had their voices strangely dubbed in Italian (I have my doubts about Pierre, I believe he really learned his lines in the other language). I like the film even though I can't connect with much of what's shown in it. The cannibal story is interesting; the one about the industrialist's son isn't all that much. The final result is chaos. Chaos in this problematic world that doesn't seem to get better. Well, at least in those predictions the master wasn't all that wrong.
Enjoyable but unsustainable for more than one view. 6/10
Connectivity betwenn the two stories
cram101028 August 2007
Warning: Spoilers
I only want to say which connectivity I think I found between the two stories... I don't know if it's what Pasolini wanted to say (if he wanted to say anything) but it's just a possibility...
I think it's clear that Julian, the son of the former nazi, has that personality for two reasons: he is very intelligent and he's father is the kind of person he hates more in the world; but it's his father (That's very similar in the novel "Gracias por el fuego", from Mario Benedetti, in Spanish). Julian is very afraid of knowing himself, because it means hate his father. Julian is a socialist person (he has his 50% revolutionary slept, but he has it), and his father is the main guilts of the social injustice in his closest world. As well, he thinks he can't have any horizontal relationship with any person in the world, because he thinks he's different, maybe better, or at less more intelligent...
The other story represents what Julian should have done, for Pasolini, to find the happiness. "I killed my father, I ate human flesh, and I quiver with joy.". The only way he could have to be himself was killing his own father, the former nazi (again like "Gracias por el fuego"), and to look down of all the people (represented like eating human flesh). Then he would started to quiver with joy... but, for me, in a fake happiness resulted from a failure...
I think it's clear that Julian, the son of the former nazi, has that personality for two reasons: he is very intelligent and he's father is the kind of person he hates more in the world; but it's his father (That's very similar in the novel "Gracias por el fuego", from Mario Benedetti, in Spanish). Julian is very afraid of knowing himself, because it means hate his father. Julian is a socialist person (he has his 50% revolutionary slept, but he has it), and his father is the main guilts of the social injustice in his closest world. As well, he thinks he can't have any horizontal relationship with any person in the world, because he thinks he's different, maybe better, or at less more intelligent...
The other story represents what Julian should have done, for Pasolini, to find the happiness. "I killed my father, I ate human flesh, and I quiver with joy.". The only way he could have to be himself was killing his own father, the former nazi (again like "Gracias por el fuego"), and to look down of all the people (represented like eating human flesh). Then he would started to quiver with joy... but, for me, in a fake happiness resulted from a failure...
Down with God Tra-la-la {Pier Paolo Pasolini}
Stanley-Becker12 September 2011
This movie is a testament to the power of poetry and its capacity to dwarf the medium of cinema. Pasolini merges the rites of passage towards 'bildung', {German concept for the development of civilizing Culture}, using five separate themes; - the immature rapport between a wealthy, young bourgeois couple, {named Julian and Ida}, the dilemma of Julian's parents, who desire the union, {it would be materially beneficial}, and the contrasting styles of two German plutocrats, - all this Pasolini combines and contrasts with the historical Italian vagabond life of a countryside bandit , circa the early 1500's, armed with a musket, roving the barren hilly escarpment in the Pompeian district and preying on unarmed, vulnerable Christian pilgrims on their way to Rome.
Julian and Ida play at being in love - but their inexperience leads them to compromise reality with their love of words. Julian is a spoilt young man who has been infantilized by his doting mother, who in her ensuing dialogue with Ida reveals herself to be totally blind to her son's character, believing instead that Julian has all the laudable attributes of a good German.
The narrative flow concerning this German family, shot as an interior with much opulence, antique furniture and Renaissance paintings, in enormous palatial rooms, which as the story moves forward, is intercut with desolate scenic waste as the vagabond displays primitive savagery, in killing, dismembering and cannibalizing his victims. These scenes are in a landscape that is evocatively lyrical and empty of civilization {that is apart from the hymns which are beautifully chanted by the pilgrims on their way to destruction}.
In a parody of Godard and Truffaut, it soon becomes obvious that the love of the two 'pretty young things' is doomed to fail {as the barrier that they set up between each other with meaningless words becomes insurmountable}. The movie now shifts into its essential focus. The two plutocrats, the one, being Julian's father Herr Klotz, a German word for 'idiot' or blockhead, and the other, Herr Herdhitze, meaning 'hot fire' {possibly a reference to the exterminating ovens}, square up as two contrasting sides of the German psyche. Klotz, a humanist, is a cultivated man with a sense of cynicism and an appreciation of the accurate satirical art works of George Grosz - he sees himself depicted by Grosz sitting in a café with a sexy young secretary on his lap, cigar in his mouth and a piggish face - he also refers to Brecht's championship of the workers. Herdhitze, a technocrat, on the other hand, refers to himself as a man of science, who despises individuality, and wants to convert all the impoverished farmers to technicians - he has no soul at all.
The two men face off with the core of the German problem - their love of the meat of the pig. Their dialogue .... Klotz - 'the Germans love their sausage' to which Herdhitze replies 'shit' Klotz 'but they do defecate a lot'. The ironic impasse between the two Nazis is whether Jews are pigs or not - with the added Surreal contradiction of, if the Jews are pigs why do the Germans love their pork. and why do they grunt like pigs?
The year is 1959, in the German quest for an economic miracle, questions of Jews and culture are easily overcome, and the two plutocrats combine forces, in the pursuit of their worship of material wealth. Meanwhile Julian has resolved his confusion, and sacrifices himself to the totem of the pig, by going to the German Temple - the Pigsty - and there offers himself as an anointed meal to the pigs
Pasolini has wrought a great work of Art that might have been an Epic Poem or a great novel or a great Painting like Picasso's 'Guernica' or Goya's 'Atrocities of War'. He certainly has no sympathy whatsoever for the Nazi German and his god 'The Pig'.
This is a difficult movie to digest, but it's rationale is crystal clear. If you are interested in the History of the Intellect, then this movie is unmissable.
Julian and Ida play at being in love - but their inexperience leads them to compromise reality with their love of words. Julian is a spoilt young man who has been infantilized by his doting mother, who in her ensuing dialogue with Ida reveals herself to be totally blind to her son's character, believing instead that Julian has all the laudable attributes of a good German.
The narrative flow concerning this German family, shot as an interior with much opulence, antique furniture and Renaissance paintings, in enormous palatial rooms, which as the story moves forward, is intercut with desolate scenic waste as the vagabond displays primitive savagery, in killing, dismembering and cannibalizing his victims. These scenes are in a landscape that is evocatively lyrical and empty of civilization {that is apart from the hymns which are beautifully chanted by the pilgrims on their way to destruction}.
In a parody of Godard and Truffaut, it soon becomes obvious that the love of the two 'pretty young things' is doomed to fail {as the barrier that they set up between each other with meaningless words becomes insurmountable}. The movie now shifts into its essential focus. The two plutocrats, the one, being Julian's father Herr Klotz, a German word for 'idiot' or blockhead, and the other, Herr Herdhitze, meaning 'hot fire' {possibly a reference to the exterminating ovens}, square up as two contrasting sides of the German psyche. Klotz, a humanist, is a cultivated man with a sense of cynicism and an appreciation of the accurate satirical art works of George Grosz - he sees himself depicted by Grosz sitting in a café with a sexy young secretary on his lap, cigar in his mouth and a piggish face - he also refers to Brecht's championship of the workers. Herdhitze, a technocrat, on the other hand, refers to himself as a man of science, who despises individuality, and wants to convert all the impoverished farmers to technicians - he has no soul at all.
The two men face off with the core of the German problem - their love of the meat of the pig. Their dialogue .... Klotz - 'the Germans love their sausage' to which Herdhitze replies 'shit' Klotz 'but they do defecate a lot'. The ironic impasse between the two Nazis is whether Jews are pigs or not - with the added Surreal contradiction of, if the Jews are pigs why do the Germans love their pork. and why do they grunt like pigs?
The year is 1959, in the German quest for an economic miracle, questions of Jews and culture are easily overcome, and the two plutocrats combine forces, in the pursuit of their worship of material wealth. Meanwhile Julian has resolved his confusion, and sacrifices himself to the totem of the pig, by going to the German Temple - the Pigsty - and there offers himself as an anointed meal to the pigs
Pasolini has wrought a great work of Art that might have been an Epic Poem or a great novel or a great Painting like Picasso's 'Guernica' or Goya's 'Atrocities of War'. He certainly has no sympathy whatsoever for the Nazi German and his god 'The Pig'.
This is a difficult movie to digest, but it's rationale is crystal clear. If you are interested in the History of the Intellect, then this movie is unmissable.
Unknown Genious?
mariammansuryan30 July 2018
Warning: Spoilers
I thought this movie must had had something ingenious while watching it, but couldn't really understand it. It was about a boy who does something very strange that he doesn't want to tell anyone about. He kills pigs, and at the end gets consumed by these same pigs. To his bone, without any trace left of him. And one of the characters decides it would be best if he would just had disappeared. I don't want to immediately go to the semantics of this and ask the inevitable question: what do the pigs represent, and what does the boy represent, and what does his parents' big house represent. First I want to understand the plot.
There are two parallel stories, one is about a traveller who looks like the protagonist, trying to survive in a lonely land, and the other one is about a rich boy from a rich family who doesn't do anything with his life. Who is 25 but hasn't yet kissed a girl. He also used to kill pigs. For fun. He didn't need to do it, he was just so rich he didn't need to do anything really. His father is a mockery of Hitler or one of his servants, that is obvious by all the ridiculous names of the officials. The war is over, the USSR is taking on. The pigs represent the weaker, the worse types. So in this case, it may very well be that the pigs are the Jews, the Soviets, whom they had been slaughtering with such light hands. Unconsciously perhaps, the father had sent his son to do that. And the son was his father's conscience. He got destroyed, completely by those same pigs he was eating before.
The conscience was actually way bigger and freer than the confining large house he lived in. The conscience was in the mountains, killing people. That seems to be another version of the protagonist's life. He kills and eats a human there. Just the same way he killed pigs in the castle. It's as if this second world is the dark reality while the first world is the beautiful illusion. In reality, it is a person he is killing. And at the end, the protagonist gets crucified by a tribe of others. So happens in the castle, just by pigs, not anyone else. It's as if there is this higher world and all the officials live in this castle where nothing is real, while the boy's true residence is there. Now why do I think he is the conscience of the father? Maybe he isn't, he is just able to see the reality.
While he was probably eating healthy and luxurious foods in his father's castle, the protagonist was in reality starving in the mountains. He had a spiritual need that could only be fulfilled by eating those pigs. It was hunger for destruction, hunger that no palace could fulfill.
And what about the girl? The girlfriend of course showed the period of time, she was one of those hippy kids. So now is the time where people are going against the Soviet Regime. That means, that the German era is over, all their games are fake already. At the end, the father walks out of the house, with still his proud walk. He lives the place and disappears among the guests, the waiting crowd.
The girl is also very young, only seventeen. In one scene, they are walking towards each other with a lake separating them. He asks her to kiss him, first she says no, then when they reach each other, the girl wants to kiss the protagonist, but he no longer wants that kiss. This shows the longing for desire. It's like in Michelangelo's Adam's Birth. Where Adam and God are reaching towards each other but there is always this slight distance between their fingers and I think it's that distance that gives the painting all its beauty. That distance is life. If they touch, nothing is so unknown and mysterious anymore.
In another scene, they are both in the house. But he is sitting in the carriage while Ida invites him out. It's a carriage in the house. One that doesn't move. It's something that maybe used to work but not anymore. Completely pointless. That shows that the boy is stuck in his life, that he is going nowhere. While she wants to move on in her life.
Father and mother care about him. Father also plays the harp, which, especially in one particular sequence, is shown to control the world. As if he is controlling the world without even leaving his palace. But I don't know whether this lasts for the entire movie. There was probably another instrument which overtook at the end, I just didn't notice it.
There is a lot of loneliness in the protagonist's life. He is all alone, he lives in his world and Ida leaves him too. He has this sort of double existence in his huge bed and meditative world.
I don't know what I thought about this movie, I think it is definitely rewatchable, there would definitely be new things I would understand if I were to rewatch it.
There are two parallel stories, one is about a traveller who looks like the protagonist, trying to survive in a lonely land, and the other one is about a rich boy from a rich family who doesn't do anything with his life. Who is 25 but hasn't yet kissed a girl. He also used to kill pigs. For fun. He didn't need to do it, he was just so rich he didn't need to do anything really. His father is a mockery of Hitler or one of his servants, that is obvious by all the ridiculous names of the officials. The war is over, the USSR is taking on. The pigs represent the weaker, the worse types. So in this case, it may very well be that the pigs are the Jews, the Soviets, whom they had been slaughtering with such light hands. Unconsciously perhaps, the father had sent his son to do that. And the son was his father's conscience. He got destroyed, completely by those same pigs he was eating before.
The conscience was actually way bigger and freer than the confining large house he lived in. The conscience was in the mountains, killing people. That seems to be another version of the protagonist's life. He kills and eats a human there. Just the same way he killed pigs in the castle. It's as if this second world is the dark reality while the first world is the beautiful illusion. In reality, it is a person he is killing. And at the end, the protagonist gets crucified by a tribe of others. So happens in the castle, just by pigs, not anyone else. It's as if there is this higher world and all the officials live in this castle where nothing is real, while the boy's true residence is there. Now why do I think he is the conscience of the father? Maybe he isn't, he is just able to see the reality.
While he was probably eating healthy and luxurious foods in his father's castle, the protagonist was in reality starving in the mountains. He had a spiritual need that could only be fulfilled by eating those pigs. It was hunger for destruction, hunger that no palace could fulfill.
And what about the girl? The girlfriend of course showed the period of time, she was one of those hippy kids. So now is the time where people are going against the Soviet Regime. That means, that the German era is over, all their games are fake already. At the end, the father walks out of the house, with still his proud walk. He lives the place and disappears among the guests, the waiting crowd.
The girl is also very young, only seventeen. In one scene, they are walking towards each other with a lake separating them. He asks her to kiss him, first she says no, then when they reach each other, the girl wants to kiss the protagonist, but he no longer wants that kiss. This shows the longing for desire. It's like in Michelangelo's Adam's Birth. Where Adam and God are reaching towards each other but there is always this slight distance between their fingers and I think it's that distance that gives the painting all its beauty. That distance is life. If they touch, nothing is so unknown and mysterious anymore.
In another scene, they are both in the house. But he is sitting in the carriage while Ida invites him out. It's a carriage in the house. One that doesn't move. It's something that maybe used to work but not anymore. Completely pointless. That shows that the boy is stuck in his life, that he is going nowhere. While she wants to move on in her life.
Father and mother care about him. Father also plays the harp, which, especially in one particular sequence, is shown to control the world. As if he is controlling the world without even leaving his palace. But I don't know whether this lasts for the entire movie. There was probably another instrument which overtook at the end, I just didn't notice it.
There is a lot of loneliness in the protagonist's life. He is all alone, he lives in his world and Ida leaves him too. He has this sort of double existence in his huge bed and meditative world.
I don't know what I thought about this movie, I think it is definitely rewatchable, there would definitely be new things I would understand if I were to rewatch it.
Once digested, plenty of a experience to dig.
jmgiovine10 July 2019
Pasolini's drama possess a strong sense of both, humor and commentary, told in the particular way only the director could be capable of, with great poetic-like dialogue, and strong-thought-provoking themes all over the two stories presented, about cannibalism and human relationships, and while the whole flick could be hardly digestible for most audiences, for the small-but-self-aware section that won't mind the twisted-raw depictions over the director's ideologies, this will represent quite the experience.
the consumer and the Id
jaibo21 November 2007
Warning: Spoilers
Perhaps Pasolini's most complex and difficult film, a two-strand tale about firstly the son of a wealthy industrialist who likes having sex with pigs, and secondly a medieval cannibal whose motto is "I killed my father, I ate human flesh, and I quiver with joy." At first, the two tales appear to have little relation with one another, other than a shared focus on extremely transgressive desires. But on closer inspection, the cannibal seems to be the dream Id of the son of the bourgeoisie, and the mythic tale operates in the subconscious of the contemporary one.
The style of the film is very cryptic and deliberately unapproachable but there is method in Pasolini's madness. The industrialist and his rival are comic figures of monstrous proportion, and seem to represent the old-style Capitalism, with its factories blotting the landscape of Western cities, and the new Capitalism, whose factories are out-of-site in some third world clime. The second capitalism is equated with Nazi-ism, and an uneasy truce is reached between the two faces of Capitol. It is in that truce that Pasolini seems to be suggesting that those of us in Western societies live our consumer lives. Probably his second bleakest film, after of course Salo.
The style of the film is very cryptic and deliberately unapproachable but there is method in Pasolini's madness. The industrialist and his rival are comic figures of monstrous proportion, and seem to represent the old-style Capitalism, with its factories blotting the landscape of Western cities, and the new Capitalism, whose factories are out-of-site in some third world clime. The second capitalism is equated with Nazi-ism, and an uneasy truce is reached between the two faces of Capitol. It is in that truce that Pasolini seems to be suggesting that those of us in Western societies live our consumer lives. Probably his second bleakest film, after of course Salo.
Fans Only
jackroberts200026 February 2005
Yet again Passolini at its second best. Two stories , one movie and a lack of continuity. If you are in a depressing- poetic mood let yourself be manipulated by this euro flick . I mostly recommend this movie to fans of neorealism. Do not try to read into the stories. They are just twinkles, strange , powerful , disturbing : cannibalism , gratuitous nudity , desolation, hypocrisy, patricide. As with most of Passolini's works , here politics, religion and philosophy meet to throw up nonsense. Do not watch this movie with your date. If you have the stomach for this picture than you should watch : Salo 120 Days of Sodom (1975) by the same director now that's a movie for you!
Oblique yet brilliant satire
oOgiandujaOo_and_Eddy_Merckx19 July 2009
So instead of having a party and drinking and such, I thought I'd see in the new year by watching two offerings from Pasolini, Le Mura di Sana / The Walls of Sana'a (1964) and Porcile (1969).
There are DVD versions out there which have scenes from Porcile in the wrong order, so, at the time of writing, if you want to see Porcile properly you have to have the Region 2 UK Tartan Pasolini box-set.
Porcile, I will say, is a great film. There are two stories that are played alongside each other. Pierre Clémenti is a... well... who knows, a sprite perhaps, in a barbarous medieval setting. It's clear Pasolini has chosen him because he has a hard-on for him, he looks like he's come straight out of a Caravaggio painting. Our sprite and some buddies run around the black slopes of Etna being mad, it's very entertaining, and almost wordless. You can't really believe what you're seeing, it appears that Etna is actually active when they're on it, there is black smoke spewing forth, and the actors run past the most awesomely evil sulphurous cave you've ever seen. So you get to see some fornication, cannibalism, volcanism, and our sprite throwing a human head into the aforementioned evil hole. It's the most purely primal thing I've ever seen, and I've watched Matthew Barney films.
The other half of the movie is set in an Italianate villa in Germany, it concerns on the one hand Mr Klotz and Mr Herdhitze, two industrialists vying with each other for superiority, and on the other hand Julian (playde by Jean-Pierre Léaud), Herr Klotz's son. Julian is portrayed as withdrawing from the human race almost entirely, this is shown to be down to his parents, who self-describe themselves as the type of people who would be painted as pigs by George Grosz, an elitist, although entirely accurate and most wondrous piece of scriptwriting. Julian has no concept of the joy of living or of functional human relationships at all, and so this child of the rich takes to copulating with pigs. Who can blame him as he has only the example of his parents' ruinous and obscure preoccupations, specifically the pursuit of wealth. At one point Julian describes a dream where he walks along a road searching for something at night, the road is filled with shining puddles, and then a little piglet comes a long and playfully bites four of his fingers off, and it doesn't hurt, they come off, as if they were made of rubber. At one point Julian's mother and his girlfriend stand opposite one another describing him, as if he were two completely separate people. And yet he's both. This shows how ideology and prejudice only allow you to see someone, as if through murky water.
There are DVD versions out there which have scenes from Porcile in the wrong order, so, at the time of writing, if you want to see Porcile properly you have to have the Region 2 UK Tartan Pasolini box-set.
Porcile, I will say, is a great film. There are two stories that are played alongside each other. Pierre Clémenti is a... well... who knows, a sprite perhaps, in a barbarous medieval setting. It's clear Pasolini has chosen him because he has a hard-on for him, he looks like he's come straight out of a Caravaggio painting. Our sprite and some buddies run around the black slopes of Etna being mad, it's very entertaining, and almost wordless. You can't really believe what you're seeing, it appears that Etna is actually active when they're on it, there is black smoke spewing forth, and the actors run past the most awesomely evil sulphurous cave you've ever seen. So you get to see some fornication, cannibalism, volcanism, and our sprite throwing a human head into the aforementioned evil hole. It's the most purely primal thing I've ever seen, and I've watched Matthew Barney films.
The other half of the movie is set in an Italianate villa in Germany, it concerns on the one hand Mr Klotz and Mr Herdhitze, two industrialists vying with each other for superiority, and on the other hand Julian (playde by Jean-Pierre Léaud), Herr Klotz's son. Julian is portrayed as withdrawing from the human race almost entirely, this is shown to be down to his parents, who self-describe themselves as the type of people who would be painted as pigs by George Grosz, an elitist, although entirely accurate and most wondrous piece of scriptwriting. Julian has no concept of the joy of living or of functional human relationships at all, and so this child of the rich takes to copulating with pigs. Who can blame him as he has only the example of his parents' ruinous and obscure preoccupations, specifically the pursuit of wealth. At one point Julian describes a dream where he walks along a road searching for something at night, the road is filled with shining puddles, and then a little piglet comes a long and playfully bites four of his fingers off, and it doesn't hurt, they come off, as if they were made of rubber. At one point Julian's mother and his girlfriend stand opposite one another describing him, as if he were two completely separate people. And yet he's both. This shows how ideology and prejudice only allow you to see someone, as if through murky water.
Polemic begins to take over
davidmvining19 March 2024
I don't think this quite works. I think something has broken in Pasolini's narrative brain at this point where his hatred of modernity, Italy, culture (past, present, and what he saw as the future), the lack of Marxist revolution, and even the New Left was simply the point of his cinematic undertakings at this point. We're left with symbols, implied meanings, and archetypes. I'm just glad he's really good at making movies, or this would have been a complete disaster instead of something of a near miss.
The film has two parallel stories. The first is nearly wordless and takes place in some kind of Medieval setting (it seems to be Spain, but it's mainly filmed on Mount Etna). The second is set in contemporary West Germany and centers on the son of an industrialist who is caught between conformity and rebellion, and it's a far wordier affair.
In the medieval setting, a nameless bandit (Pierre Clementi) finds armor and a rifle which he uses to kill a soldier before gaining a follower (Franco Citti) and becoming cannibals who decapitate their victims, throw the heads into a volcanic opening, and save (or enslave?) four women held captive. They become the terror of the countryside, eliciting a response from the local officials who entrap them with a pair of naked young people, capture them, and then sentence them to death by being tied to the black volcanic ground to be eaten by dogs.
In the contemporary German setting, Julian (Jean-Pierre Leaud) explains to Ida (Anne Wiazemsky) that he has no interest in joining her and her friends to protest the Berlin Wall by pissing on it (the incoherence of Ida's objections to the wall as a construct of Western Capitalism seems to be a joke on Pasolini's part at the expense of the New Left because the wall was constructed by communist East Germany, making it seem like Ida, as committed to progressive politics as she makes herself out to be, doesn't actually understand the world at all). Julian enters a catatonic state after Ida leaves, leaving his mother (Margarita Lozano) to ache over him while his father, Herr Klotz (Alberto Lionello), complete with Hitler mustache, schemes to destroy his rival, Herr Herdhitze (Ugo Tognazzi), a former schoolmate who became a war criminal under another name during the Nazi regime. The point of this all feels like a rehash of what Pasolini managed more interestingly in Teorema, but Pigsty has the advantage of being more outrageous, allowing for more purely entertaining moments.
What do these two tales have to do with each other? Well, I think the main point is that human nature won't change, and that really irritated Pasolini. He really expected that at some point the proletariat would rise up in unison, the New Socialist Man, to revolt against the bourgeois, and it never happened. The death of the Italian Communist Party leader Palmiro Togliatti seems to have been the turning point in his thinking (as evidenced in The Hawks and the Sparrows), and Pasolini was left with the death of his ideology and a world that has always been fallen and continues to fall in his own eyes. He hated modernity, the only group of people he regularly doesn't abuse in his films are farmers (who make a late appearance here, represented by Pasolini regular Ninetto Davoli) implying a utopian view of rural living that Italy was swiftly leaving behind. West Germany then becomes a symbol of that decadence and urbanity that Pasolini so abhorred.
There also becomes a more literal connection between the two when it's discovered that one character likes to go to the titular pigsties for implied carnal experiences but ends up eaten entirely by the pigs, drawing a parallel with the eating by dogs in the medieval section.
And we get to my problem with the film: it's a film that's coming straight from Pasolini's id without passing through any sort of narrative concerns. There are stylistic contrasts (the settings of Etna played against the palatial estate supposedly in West Germany, the muteness against the verboseness, and the simple change in time periods) that are obviously intentional, but ultimately the exercise seems like an effort on Pasolini's part to simply step back from the world and accuse everyone of not living up to his Marxist standards. Characters no longer feel real, especially Julian and Ida who feel more like artefacts of a Godard film rather than the naturalistic efforts that Pasolini had put into his first films. It's stylization in pursuit of hate objects.
However, that's not to imply that the film is a miserable experience. I was actually reasonably entertained by it, but it was the surface of things that got me through it. Firstly, Pasolini is simply a great visual filmmaker, and his films are always gorgeous to look at. Pigsty is no exception to that rule. The footage filmed at Etna, in particular, is simply great to regard. While I don't think that Leaud or Wiazemsky give anything like naturalistic performances, their mannered approaches to their characters provide some fun banter, but the most entertaining (and mannered) performances belong to Lionello and Tognazzi who get a couple of extended bits to play off of each other, nice on the surface but trying to destroy each other just beneath.
So, I see Pigsty as a mixed bag. Pasolini seems to have abandoned efforts at actual storytelling in pursuit of stylistic experimentation. That creates symbolism that is never as interesting as artists seem to think it is while denying the audience the traditional things to latch onto. However, there are entertaining bits, and it's not like Pasolini isn't saying nothing with the effort. There was real thought that went into the film's construction, but Pasolini's hatred was the motivating factor of the film, not telling a story.
The film has two parallel stories. The first is nearly wordless and takes place in some kind of Medieval setting (it seems to be Spain, but it's mainly filmed on Mount Etna). The second is set in contemporary West Germany and centers on the son of an industrialist who is caught between conformity and rebellion, and it's a far wordier affair.
In the medieval setting, a nameless bandit (Pierre Clementi) finds armor and a rifle which he uses to kill a soldier before gaining a follower (Franco Citti) and becoming cannibals who decapitate their victims, throw the heads into a volcanic opening, and save (or enslave?) four women held captive. They become the terror of the countryside, eliciting a response from the local officials who entrap them with a pair of naked young people, capture them, and then sentence them to death by being tied to the black volcanic ground to be eaten by dogs.
In the contemporary German setting, Julian (Jean-Pierre Leaud) explains to Ida (Anne Wiazemsky) that he has no interest in joining her and her friends to protest the Berlin Wall by pissing on it (the incoherence of Ida's objections to the wall as a construct of Western Capitalism seems to be a joke on Pasolini's part at the expense of the New Left because the wall was constructed by communist East Germany, making it seem like Ida, as committed to progressive politics as she makes herself out to be, doesn't actually understand the world at all). Julian enters a catatonic state after Ida leaves, leaving his mother (Margarita Lozano) to ache over him while his father, Herr Klotz (Alberto Lionello), complete with Hitler mustache, schemes to destroy his rival, Herr Herdhitze (Ugo Tognazzi), a former schoolmate who became a war criminal under another name during the Nazi regime. The point of this all feels like a rehash of what Pasolini managed more interestingly in Teorema, but Pigsty has the advantage of being more outrageous, allowing for more purely entertaining moments.
What do these two tales have to do with each other? Well, I think the main point is that human nature won't change, and that really irritated Pasolini. He really expected that at some point the proletariat would rise up in unison, the New Socialist Man, to revolt against the bourgeois, and it never happened. The death of the Italian Communist Party leader Palmiro Togliatti seems to have been the turning point in his thinking (as evidenced in The Hawks and the Sparrows), and Pasolini was left with the death of his ideology and a world that has always been fallen and continues to fall in his own eyes. He hated modernity, the only group of people he regularly doesn't abuse in his films are farmers (who make a late appearance here, represented by Pasolini regular Ninetto Davoli) implying a utopian view of rural living that Italy was swiftly leaving behind. West Germany then becomes a symbol of that decadence and urbanity that Pasolini so abhorred.
There also becomes a more literal connection between the two when it's discovered that one character likes to go to the titular pigsties for implied carnal experiences but ends up eaten entirely by the pigs, drawing a parallel with the eating by dogs in the medieval section.
And we get to my problem with the film: it's a film that's coming straight from Pasolini's id without passing through any sort of narrative concerns. There are stylistic contrasts (the settings of Etna played against the palatial estate supposedly in West Germany, the muteness against the verboseness, and the simple change in time periods) that are obviously intentional, but ultimately the exercise seems like an effort on Pasolini's part to simply step back from the world and accuse everyone of not living up to his Marxist standards. Characters no longer feel real, especially Julian and Ida who feel more like artefacts of a Godard film rather than the naturalistic efforts that Pasolini had put into his first films. It's stylization in pursuit of hate objects.
However, that's not to imply that the film is a miserable experience. I was actually reasonably entertained by it, but it was the surface of things that got me through it. Firstly, Pasolini is simply a great visual filmmaker, and his films are always gorgeous to look at. Pigsty is no exception to that rule. The footage filmed at Etna, in particular, is simply great to regard. While I don't think that Leaud or Wiazemsky give anything like naturalistic performances, their mannered approaches to their characters provide some fun banter, but the most entertaining (and mannered) performances belong to Lionello and Tognazzi who get a couple of extended bits to play off of each other, nice on the surface but trying to destroy each other just beneath.
So, I see Pigsty as a mixed bag. Pasolini seems to have abandoned efforts at actual storytelling in pursuit of stylistic experimentation. That creates symbolism that is never as interesting as artists seem to think it is while denying the audience the traditional things to latch onto. However, there are entertaining bits, and it's not like Pasolini isn't saying nothing with the effort. There was real thought that went into the film's construction, but Pasolini's hatred was the motivating factor of the film, not telling a story.
Bleak, Brutal and Bizarre
RobertF8712 November 2013
This is one of the strangest works of Italian writer-director Pier Paolo Pasolini. It interweaves two story lines: The first, almost dialogue- free, tale takes place in an unknown volcanic landscape at an unspecified historical period and involves a young cannibal who leads a band that rapes and murders the local populace. The second tale is set in 1967 Germany and involves the son of a wealthy industrialist who is used as a pawn in a power game between his father and a business rival.
It's well-made with several striking images, but it is very slow, very obscure and challenging. It is a bleakly savage satire on human nature, which will certainly not appeal to everyone. In fact it's a film that is easy to admire, but hard to like.
It is certainly a powerful work of art, but certainly don't expect to enjoy it.
It's well-made with several striking images, but it is very slow, very obscure and challenging. It is a bleakly savage satire on human nature, which will certainly not appeal to everyone. In fact it's a film that is easy to admire, but hard to like.
It is certainly a powerful work of art, but certainly don't expect to enjoy it.
Pig propaganda
EnoVarma5 July 2018
Warning: Spoilers
Difficult, perplexing and often cinematically beautiful movie. One is warmly recommended to see it at least twice - although having seen it two times I still don't understand all of it.
This is either because I'm stupid or because Pasolini doesn't quite manage to translate his complex ideas into an accessible piece of cinema. The jury's out on that one. Nevertheless, "Porcile" is a rich and satisfying art film.
It is - and this is not mentioned often enough - a surreal film. The two intertwining stories (one taking place in Germany 1967 and the other in 16th or 17th century Italy at the base of Mount Etna) have only one concrete thing in common, a secondary actor appearing in both stories. Also, the older story may or may not be imagined by the central figure, Julian (played by the legendary Jean-Pierre Leaud), the son of a rich industrialist (who looks like a satirized Hitler). Julian has some issues. It is hinted, or more than just hinted, that this boy surrounded by wealth and disconnected from the real world, cocooned in his intellectual abstractions, is so incapable of creating a rapport with the girl she loves, that he gets his sexual release in the confines of a pigstine. Similarly, the protagonist in the other story, coming from absolute poverty, resorts to cannibalism and professes himself to have killed his father and feeling exstatic about it.
Almost certainly every line and scene has a meaning to it, but the pieces don't seem to always fit the puzzle. One consequence of this is the lack of bite in the darkly ironic humour in the scenes with Julian's father and his adversery, a former nazi, who uses Julian's scandalous habits to wrangle the father into business with him.
The potent ideas are there, anyway, and stay in your mind for a long time after. As does the work of the master cinematographer Tonino Delli Colli: the scenes by Mount Etna are especially striking.
Although it might at first seem like "Porcile" belittles the wonderful species of the pig, they might in the end come out as the winners of this condemnation of the state of humanity.
Noteworthy: another great Italian director and iconoclast, Marco Ferreri, makes an appearance.
This is either because I'm stupid or because Pasolini doesn't quite manage to translate his complex ideas into an accessible piece of cinema. The jury's out on that one. Nevertheless, "Porcile" is a rich and satisfying art film.
It is - and this is not mentioned often enough - a surreal film. The two intertwining stories (one taking place in Germany 1967 and the other in 16th or 17th century Italy at the base of Mount Etna) have only one concrete thing in common, a secondary actor appearing in both stories. Also, the older story may or may not be imagined by the central figure, Julian (played by the legendary Jean-Pierre Leaud), the son of a rich industrialist (who looks like a satirized Hitler). Julian has some issues. It is hinted, or more than just hinted, that this boy surrounded by wealth and disconnected from the real world, cocooned in his intellectual abstractions, is so incapable of creating a rapport with the girl she loves, that he gets his sexual release in the confines of a pigstine. Similarly, the protagonist in the other story, coming from absolute poverty, resorts to cannibalism and professes himself to have killed his father and feeling exstatic about it.
Almost certainly every line and scene has a meaning to it, but the pieces don't seem to always fit the puzzle. One consequence of this is the lack of bite in the darkly ironic humour in the scenes with Julian's father and his adversery, a former nazi, who uses Julian's scandalous habits to wrangle the father into business with him.
The potent ideas are there, anyway, and stay in your mind for a long time after. As does the work of the master cinematographer Tonino Delli Colli: the scenes by Mount Etna are especially striking.
Although it might at first seem like "Porcile" belittles the wonderful species of the pig, they might in the end come out as the winners of this condemnation of the state of humanity.
Noteworthy: another great Italian director and iconoclast, Marco Ferreri, makes an appearance.
Quietly haunting
Olly-47 March 1999
Porcile is one of those films that gets under your skin, and you're not sure why. The storyline unfolds in a style that is typically atypical of Pasolini; the tale of a college-aged son of a former Nazi isolating himself from everyone else (while encountering feelings that lend the film its title) is intertwined with that of a cannibalistic hermit from the Middle Ages. What results is a parallelistic criticism of modern society, not unlike Pasolini's earlier Teorema. The ending, which leaves an impact (although the actions take place off camera), is understated but undeniably chilling. Overall: 9/10
A great sarcastic analogy
eagandersongil24 April 2022
A film by the legendary Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini, it is above all a Political film, and the filmmaker makes this very clear in his introduction by calling Hitler an "Effeminate Killer", the terminology used here is one of sarcasm and brilliant black humor. , by the way, the whole movie is a joke, it can even be a heavy joke, but here the social criticisms are treated from a unique aspect, where we have the duality of two narrative lines that follow, one about a young man living in a desert who practices cannibalism to feed himself and another of a young man confused with his choices who is the son of a great German industrialist, the point here is to exacerbate that both lines live on the edge of violence and mockery, both lines condemn and suffer punishment for their actions and both at bottom have the same end thought.
Pasolini uses a narrative of contrasting cores, with a core based on text and another in contemplation, when watching the film for the first time it is common to be confused, but on a second look we understand the creative subtleties of pasolini's script, and we understand, above of all the quality of its text and its artistic importance, "Sty" is not a "heavy" film as many claim, it is a film that works entirely on sarcastic metaphors of social criticism. The direction is consistent, with a camera that fluctuates a lot of visual styles between the two cores of the plot and manages to, in a way, even expose Paolini's versatility, one of the great problems of the film for me are two, without fishing the political references, the narrative by itself does not stand, it is necessary to understand this allegory first, and second is that I would like to feel a little more the viscerality of the characters' actions, as Pasolini himself did in some of his future features. 8/10.
Pasolini uses a narrative of contrasting cores, with a core based on text and another in contemplation, when watching the film for the first time it is common to be confused, but on a second look we understand the creative subtleties of pasolini's script, and we understand, above of all the quality of its text and its artistic importance, "Sty" is not a "heavy" film as many claim, it is a film that works entirely on sarcastic metaphors of social criticism. The direction is consistent, with a camera that fluctuates a lot of visual styles between the two cores of the plot and manages to, in a way, even expose Paolini's versatility, one of the great problems of the film for me are two, without fishing the political references, the narrative by itself does not stand, it is necessary to understand this allegory first, and second is that I would like to feel a little more the viscerality of the characters' actions, as Pasolini himself did in some of his future features. 8/10.
Definitely NOT the Pasolini to begin with...
dbdumonteil17 June 2007
It's arguably his least accessible work.And probably his more boring too.Like in "Oedipe" ,or in "teorema" ,there is a mix of contemporary scenes and a tale of long ago ,which could happen anywhere ,in the Middle Ages or the antiquity -which Pasolini broached with his Gospel,Medea and Oedipe-.
"Porcile" bears the appropriate scars of the time .All the scenes between Jean-Pierre Léaud (fortunately,he is dubbed ,so the French -speaking do not have to hear his affected voice)and Anne Wiazemsky are terribly stodgy.The two "intellectual" "actors" epitomize ,as far as I'm concerned,the nadir of French acting.These interminable dialogs recall the dreadful rhetoric of GOdard's "La Chinoise" .
Things go better when Pasolini directs the fathers: one of them,a former Nazi has A skeleton in the closet and the other one's son is a zoophilist (check the title).As for the Pierre Clementi sequences -in an undefined past,which deal with cannibalism (I killed my father/I eat human flesh),the connection with the main plot escapes me,I fear.
A young person who wants to discover Pasolini should not begin with "Porcile" (or ,worse "Salo" )."Mamma Roma" "Il vangelo secondo Matteo" or "Medea" are wiser choices.
"Porcile" bears the appropriate scars of the time .All the scenes between Jean-Pierre Léaud (fortunately,he is dubbed ,so the French -speaking do not have to hear his affected voice)and Anne Wiazemsky are terribly stodgy.The two "intellectual" "actors" epitomize ,as far as I'm concerned,the nadir of French acting.These interminable dialogs recall the dreadful rhetoric of GOdard's "La Chinoise" .
Things go better when Pasolini directs the fathers: one of them,a former Nazi has A skeleton in the closet and the other one's son is a zoophilist (check the title).As for the Pierre Clementi sequences -in an undefined past,which deal with cannibalism (I killed my father/I eat human flesh),the connection with the main plot escapes me,I fear.
A young person who wants to discover Pasolini should not begin with "Porcile" (or ,worse "Salo" )."Mamma Roma" "Il vangelo secondo Matteo" or "Medea" are wiser choices.
The Evolution From Cannibalism to Sodomy
hasosch21 February 2009
Warning: Spoilers
Bsesides his final work "Salo", the "Porcile" is Pier Paolo Pasolini's most abstract, most hermetic and thus most and also most controversially discussed film. In a famous German reference work of film, this movie is interpreted in the following way: both cannibalism and sodomy be "symbols" of Pasolini's homosexuality. I have seldom read something more stupid and primitive. Moreover, in all reference commentaries that I have seen so far, the interpreters seem to be sure that "Pigsty" consists of two independent parts.
In one of the two parallel told stories, a cannibal who seems to live in a paleolithic world, is condemned to be mangled by dogs. In the other parallel told story which plays in a German (?) castle, some negotiations of leading fascists are told. Here we see the ultimate predecessor motives of Salo. There is also a son, Julian, bourgeois like his father, who meets Ida, a liberal girl, and it seems that they cannot come together. The water that separates them looks like the border between the Here and the Beyond and not like a swimming pool embedded in a piece of park. Even when they try to walk towards one another, the never succeed in reaching a meeting point on one of the borders. Julian, however, prefers to enjoy his sexual contacts in the pigsty that belongs to the park of the castle, with the pigs that finally eat him up. The two parallel told stories have in common, as Pasolini himself said, that "bourgeoisy eats up his children". This may be true - since the time of evolution between the paleolithic and post-war fascistoid Italy just made the short step from cannibalism to sodomy.
In one of the two parallel told stories, a cannibal who seems to live in a paleolithic world, is condemned to be mangled by dogs. In the other parallel told story which plays in a German (?) castle, some negotiations of leading fascists are told. Here we see the ultimate predecessor motives of Salo. There is also a son, Julian, bourgeois like his father, who meets Ida, a liberal girl, and it seems that they cannot come together. The water that separates them looks like the border between the Here and the Beyond and not like a swimming pool embedded in a piece of park. Even when they try to walk towards one another, the never succeed in reaching a meeting point on one of the borders. Julian, however, prefers to enjoy his sexual contacts in the pigsty that belongs to the park of the castle, with the pigs that finally eat him up. The two parallel told stories have in common, as Pasolini himself said, that "bourgeoisy eats up his children". This may be true - since the time of evolution between the paleolithic and post-war fascistoid Italy just made the short step from cannibalism to sodomy.
The seer who brings vision
chaos-rampant26 August 2015
I thought I was going to be confronted with minor Pasolini here. I was wrong. The same caution applies here though for casual viewers. With Pasolini we come to the foot of a cave where a sage is rumored to live, we can either turn back because there's no ornate ceremony, go back to where we can be told riveting stories about heroes wrestling fate; or sit and listen (not all of it may be intelligible), enter and divine vision.
It opens with young intellectuals in a lush villa ruminating on their exasperations like out of Godard, from the time when revolutions were felt to be afoot. Oh the cause may be worthy in Pasolini's eyes, most likely is; but he makes it a point to show the modern self secluded from it in idle comfort, obsessed with analyzing himself in the scheme of narratives, dissatisfied, full of unrequited cravings and contradictions.
In a separate medieval story we see man as only one more beast of prey alone in the wilderness, reduced to eating a butterfly to stave his insatiable hunger. We see what lurks behind that civilized self that always expects to be pleased, or better, all that had to transpire for endless time in the wilds. It's important here to see both the contrast and the continuity. The cruel nature in man as nature.
And then in a breathtaking scene we're sent scurrying through windswept volcanic rock to see the human beast confronting itself in the crossroads, someone else much like him, alone and wary. There are few scenes more primal than this in cinema.
Back in the modern portion, the same meeting between rivals takes place now with a lot of coy evasion, irony and duplicity, in a palace instead of the wild, over drinks. We see how human structures in place foster collaboration in the end; but it's a corporate one for profit that puts the beast in fine clothes, changes his face even, but leaves the hunger intact.
Pasolini gives us the same barbs about modern life as he has elsewhere, relishing the opportunity, but he's not a sweeping fool; in the medieval portion he makes it a point to show that it's civilized structures, church and army, that go out in the wild to punish wrongdoing, install a semblance of order.
We could be talking for days about what he has woven here. Sin that you control and sin that you don't. Law as necessary civilization. Bartering as control over the narrative (pigsty / WWII in the film). Love that you provide for versus the abstract calling from inmost soul.
So okay, his camera seems sloppy from afar; he wants it to be you who has the chance encounter in these wilds instead of something bled of its reality on a lavish stage, wants it to be primal, madness the gods whisper to you. You'll see near the end some marvelously elliptic narrative as he conjures visions, no accident of sloppiness there; Pasolini is once more anticipating Malick.
And he's aghast at the base nature he sees in him and things, impurity weighs him down; the whole film says, I have these things gnawing inside of me that I'll pay the price for even if I didn't put them there myself. Pasolini at his rawest makes the rocks crack open.
The most riveting thing about it is that we have this seer in the wild of soul, who can bring vision back. He is the one who can't stay for love because something more abstract calls his name. He is the one who strays in the pigsty at nights, who has sinned in the wilds, ate the flesh.
It opens with young intellectuals in a lush villa ruminating on their exasperations like out of Godard, from the time when revolutions were felt to be afoot. Oh the cause may be worthy in Pasolini's eyes, most likely is; but he makes it a point to show the modern self secluded from it in idle comfort, obsessed with analyzing himself in the scheme of narratives, dissatisfied, full of unrequited cravings and contradictions.
In a separate medieval story we see man as only one more beast of prey alone in the wilderness, reduced to eating a butterfly to stave his insatiable hunger. We see what lurks behind that civilized self that always expects to be pleased, or better, all that had to transpire for endless time in the wilds. It's important here to see both the contrast and the continuity. The cruel nature in man as nature.
And then in a breathtaking scene we're sent scurrying through windswept volcanic rock to see the human beast confronting itself in the crossroads, someone else much like him, alone and wary. There are few scenes more primal than this in cinema.
Back in the modern portion, the same meeting between rivals takes place now with a lot of coy evasion, irony and duplicity, in a palace instead of the wild, over drinks. We see how human structures in place foster collaboration in the end; but it's a corporate one for profit that puts the beast in fine clothes, changes his face even, but leaves the hunger intact.
Pasolini gives us the same barbs about modern life as he has elsewhere, relishing the opportunity, but he's not a sweeping fool; in the medieval portion he makes it a point to show that it's civilized structures, church and army, that go out in the wild to punish wrongdoing, install a semblance of order.
We could be talking for days about what he has woven here. Sin that you control and sin that you don't. Law as necessary civilization. Bartering as control over the narrative (pigsty / WWII in the film). Love that you provide for versus the abstract calling from inmost soul.
So okay, his camera seems sloppy from afar; he wants it to be you who has the chance encounter in these wilds instead of something bled of its reality on a lavish stage, wants it to be primal, madness the gods whisper to you. You'll see near the end some marvelously elliptic narrative as he conjures visions, no accident of sloppiness there; Pasolini is once more anticipating Malick.
And he's aghast at the base nature he sees in him and things, impurity weighs him down; the whole film says, I have these things gnawing inside of me that I'll pay the price for even if I didn't put them there myself. Pasolini at his rawest makes the rocks crack open.
The most riveting thing about it is that we have this seer in the wild of soul, who can bring vision back. He is the one who can't stay for love because something more abstract calls his name. He is the one who strays in the pigsty at nights, who has sinned in the wilds, ate the flesh.
capitalism, religion, Burgess
quinye22 August 2008
Warning: Spoilers
I honestly admit that this film was not easy for me. But I believe that the only intention of director was to express language more beautiful and therefore with more power and suggestion. And I think this is why Pasolini is Pasolini and not Spielberg. There are three important pillars in this society that converts, under Pasolini's view, our existence in corruption: capitalism, Burgess and catholic religion. Somebody has already talked about the first (Burgess is a consequence) but I didn't heard anything yet of catholic religion. The second history (dream of the first?) ends up by dogs eating bodies of those men who first were forced to kiss the cross. Julian died devoured by pigs. Both had follow opposite ways of compromise but both died because of the beasts. What I understand is that even if Julian had followed second history (...I killed my father, I ate human flesh...) cannibalism of these powers would have defeated him. The role of the priests in second history is just to denounce the intolerance, hypocrisy and aim of power and control of Catholic religion.
no easy ride... can't really sum it up
KGB-Greece-Patras27 September 2004
I haven't seen too many Pasolini films. Hardly is there any humour thrown in this one. Unlike, say, Decameron which I really loved, which featured comical shorts, this one, is obscure and hard to explain.
I feel no need for explaining any metaphors, or finding 'what the poet wanna say', the two parallel stories have nothing obvious in common, and while one of them has no dialogues at all (visually impressive, though) the other one is full of it. Interesting dialogues, for love, lust, passion, politics.
For desert there are (for once more) two or three bits of Pasolini's denial of God. I can't help but like such statements! Recommended only to Pasolini fans and fans of old, 'arty' euro-films...
I feel no need for explaining any metaphors, or finding 'what the poet wanna say', the two parallel stories have nothing obvious in common, and while one of them has no dialogues at all (visually impressive, though) the other one is full of it. Interesting dialogues, for love, lust, passion, politics.
For desert there are (for once more) two or three bits of Pasolini's denial of God. I can't help but like such statements! Recommended only to Pasolini fans and fans of old, 'arty' euro-films...
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