Pigsty

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 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.

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.

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.