Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom

Not a movie I ever care to see again.

A part of this view­ing list: Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion Spine #17: Pier Pao­lo Pasolini’s Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom.

Chances are you won’t like this movie. Even if you do enjoy it for its cin­e­mat­ic and alle­gor­i­cal val­ue, you won’t like it. If you do like it on any­thing approach­ing an emo­tion­al­ly sat­is­fy­ing lev­el, please seek pro­fes­sion­al help imme­di­ate­ly. This film is based on the Mar­quis de Sade’s 120 Days of Sodom, adapt­ed to fit neat­ly into fas­cist Italy in 1944. Fas­cists kid­nap some kids and bru­tal­ize them to death. The film is bor­ing, dis­gust­ing and depraved through­out. Every­thing, every­body, and every body is dehu­man­ized; both tor­tur­ers and tor­tured.

This is the point.

Pasoli­ni wants us to exam­ine just what it means to be dehu­man­ized. What’s the mech­a­nism? What are the moti­va­tions? It boils down to some­thing I can real­ly only explain in a reli­gious con­text. Hell is some­times con­sid­ered as the absence of God’s love; an empti­ness. That’s sort of what’s going on in this film. The tor­tur­ers are emp­ty of all love, and thus per­vert­ed by all of their oth­er desires. They hunger to strip love from every­thing that has it, the more inno­cent and pure, the more they want to cor­rupt.

The cin­e­matog­ra­phy is the diegetic proxy of the audi­ence in this film, and it whol­ly par­tic­i­pates in this dehu­man­iza­tion. You know what that means? Yup, we view­ers were will­ing par­tic­i­pants in the tor­ture. Sit­ting on our ass­es and let­ting the cam­era do the work makes it easy to be evil. The shot selec­tion is pre­dom­i­nant­ly front-and-cen­ter, alter­nat­ing heav­i­ly between long shots and close-ups, and just about always at eye lev­el. It’s almost like you’re there, man! (And it’s bril­liant.) That’s why if you don’t come away from this film feel­ing unclean, you need some help.

The heavy use of cubist art also adds to the qui­et vio­lence of the film, and empha­sizes the twist­ed-ness of what’s going on. You’re not sup­posed to like this film, and Pasoli­ni has pulled out all the stops to make sure you don’t. He wants you to see evil, feel evil, and then won­der what that means and what you can do to make sure that you aren’t or won’t become evil.

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2 thoughts on “Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom”

  1. Salo is def­i­nite­ly one of the most extreme films I have ever seen, espe­cial­ly the cir­cle of shit sequence. On one hand, I’ve always felt that the best way to get rid of some­thing is to elim­i­nate it and cre­ate it’s anti­dote. But thats not the way film works some­times. Deal­ing with fas­cism, Pasoli­ni demon­strates that the best way is to con­front it head-on. What this film does is like rub­bing a dogs nose in it’s own shit. We all pos­sess the capa­bil­i­ty of evil.

  2. Thanks for your com­ment, Shawn. I think you’re right that the extrem­i­ty of the film is due to Pasolin­i’s choice to show the final result of unchecked phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al pow­er rather than its anti­dote. It’s a warn­ing, not an alter­na­tive.

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