Salo or the 120 Days of Sodom
In the last days of Mussolini’s Italy during World War II, four Fascists leaders make a pact. In the first minutes of “Salo,” we see them marry one another’s daughters, collect young men and women- purity is important to them; one girl is turned away for missing a tooth- and lead them to an isolated villa in the province of Salò, where they will engage in a series of rituals right out of the philosophies of the Marquis de Sade.
Like my “Movie a Week” choice of the week before- “Birth of a Nation”- and the films of Leni Riefenstahl, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s “Salo or the 120 Days of Sodom” is art that depicts evil at its’ most unforgivable. When I called it astonishing in my introductory paragraph for my “Movie a Week” article, I said it not as a critical acclimation but as a gut reaction to the depravity it shows. How the film is available anywhere with such unrelenting obscenity displayed is beyond me.
But is Pasolini- arguably the most controversial of figures in World Cinema- really condoning the behavior he shows in “Salò?” True, a look at his background- he was an atheist, a homosexual, and a Marxist, and was found gruesomely murdered the same year this film came out (in 1975)- and no doubt even the most open-minded person might say that that he does. But while the film’s characters are put through sensationalist acts of perversity that are uncompromised in their depiction and tough for even the most jaded individual to take, it could be said that Pasolini- whose film work includes co-writing Fellini’s “Nights of Cabiria” and “La Dolce Vita,” as well as directing “Gospel According to St. Matthew,” largely considered one of the best religious films of all-time- is instead offering a critique of such perversity- and the philosophical mindset that approves of it- by forcing his audience to view it head-on. The Fascists are presented purely and without sympathy, while their victims (whose largely expressionless faces speak volumes) are allowed brief moments of humanity and sympathy when they aren’t forced into degradation and, eventually, death.
Watching the film myself, I couldn’t help but think how effectively Pasolini predicted the rise of pornography (which had just gone mainstream three years before with “Deep Throat”) and the voyeurism of online websites that traffic in such behavior, and how it has made sex more impersonal and less intimate. Instead of simply being about satisfying one’s basest desires, however (as is the case in “Salo”), it’s now about money, pure and simple. I’m not saying I’m not guilty of succumbing to this aspect of modern culture, but even before watching “Salo” I found myself bottoming out in its’ appeal. Pasolini’s film simply put the final nail in the coffin.
This is one of those films where it’s impossible to judge on any traditional cinematic terms. You’ll notice I haven’t much gone into the story beyond the first paragraph (and it’s really impossible to gauge the performances, since the film plays more like performance art than traditional cinema). Quite frankly, the story (an adaptation of de Sade’s “120 Days of Sodom” in its’ structure) itself takes a backseat to the vulgarity onscreen once you get into the film. And it is a well-made film to be sure, but with such degradation of humanity on display- including forced sodomy, the consumption of feces, and violent torture and murder in broad daylight- can it be art? “Salo” blurs the line between fiction and snuff more than a few times- during the film’s “Circle of Shit” (where a feast of feces is presented not only to their captives but to the Fascists and prostitutes in charge alike) my gag reflex worked in overtime- but in how Pasolini films the events in “Salo” (a lot of long shots, with many of the more carnal acts hidden from plain view or too far away in the frame to be seen) one feels less like he’s intending to sensationalize the torture of these people so much as force us to partake in the ways we humiliate and dehumanize others, in the hopes that maybe we won’t go down the same path the Fascists in his film do.
