This is the kind of Art-house flick that people will tell you is a masterpiece even though they don't actually understand it. I don't think there's really anything there to understand and even Olmi himself didn't know what the film was about.
The only other Olmi film I've seen was "The Tree of Wooden Clogs," which seemed to me rather predictable but worth watching for the period and setting and also for the political and social insight into feudal class arrangements. I enjoy the spectacle of period pieces, but this film doesn't bother with that kind of realism. It's more of a long drawn-out fantasy nightmare with maybe some of the same elements of class distinctions transposed into the modern world. There's a thin storyline about the young protagonist who participates in a training program to become a servant at a grotesque banquet celebrating the glory of some monstrous old lady. He has flashback memories from childhood about some sort of religious imagery that seems related to present events, but all that was lost on me.
This movie is intriguing at first but then it drags on and on and never arrives at a coherent story, which becomes very aggravating about half-way through. In the end it all seems rather dated and facile and not very interesting. It's supposed to mean something deep and hidden-meaningful about society (or whatever) but it's not clear at all and by the end I was so bored I didn't care any more and was just glad it was over.
