Porcile

"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

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.

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.

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...

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.