"Salo is the anti-happiness. The anti-joy. A look at true sadism with beautiful landscaping." This line was my introduction to what would be the last film of Pier Paolo Pasolini who was killed shortly before the film was to be released into theaters. And for the most part, that could really be the best way to sum this movie up. It does have it's roots in the presumed to be lost work of the Marquis de Sade and Dante's Divine Comedy with its four parts being named after the circles of hell, such as the Circle of Blood, yet it has the backdrop of 1940s Italy to play off the depravity of four fascist libertines towards the end of the second World War as they kidnap eighteen teenage boys and girls whom become the victims of their twisted desires. I mentioned this before but I have watched this movie before yet my experience with that was strange since I watched a version that wasn't subbed or dubbed so I really had no fucking idea what was going on yet I could appreciate how well the film was shot. Might be the only thing that might make people watch it unless they can stand some of the visuals that are in this. And since I started this blog series and because the only person who follows this blog recommended that I should do a post on this, all I can say is.......
Throughout this film, the libertines (the Duke, the Bishop, the Magistrate, and the President) collect their victims in a way that makes them nothing more than livestock, meant only for their own personal use. This can come either through all of the sexual perversions that go on, the verbal abuse that the Duke especially gives out, mainly to the females of the group, or even in the finale of the film where the ones who do not fit their criteria or broke the rules are killed in brutal and disturbing manners. Also in one moment of the film where the victims are carted around the estate like dogs, fed as such and when one of them refuses to demean themselves in such a way, they are whipped repeatedly. The most notorious aspect of this film though, is the amount of coprophagia or for lack of a better term shit eating, and how stomach churning those scenes are. Even the bluray cover of the film is one of these moments, which is more subdued in its nature than compared to an early DVD cover but it still might not be the most appealing thing to look at. I also have to speak of the book, where the libertines write down the names of those who disobey the rules, those being such things as crying, unable to satisfy their masters sexually, even one of the boys is put into the book for wiping himself. This whole film can amount to just watching these four people along with a group of soldiers and guards dehumanizing this group of young teenagers for their own sick pleasures. Not much of a plot to speak of.
And since this has no plot, it can be easy to call the movie boring. That might actually makes the film a whole lot more effective in conveying it's bleak and nihilistic tone, and perhaps for the reason that might be troubling for a lot of people: that being how can a movie that involves continuous rape, torture, coprophagia, and murders that get more depraved as they go on can make it's audience bored. It can be one thing to have a movie like this that is meant to shock with its subject matter yet there is this sense of watching all of this happen, having no real attachment to any of the victims, connecting more to libertines who for the most part are heartless and soulless, the worst that humanity has to offer. It is rather painful to feel nothing in this situation. Sure, we have slasher films for example that take pride in being nothing more than watching a man in a mask killing off teenagers and those are enjoyed by the masses who are not attached to the victims, mainly because those movies make the audience want to see them be killed off in amusing ways. Salo doesn't have that. There is no attachment at all and that might be the scariest thing about the whole movie, that people do things like this for no reason at all and that the audience should understand and relate to that.
Is there more subtext hidden in the movie itself? For the most part, I have no clue. I have heard of things that Pasolini had said he put into the film in interviews, such as that the shit eating was a metaphor for the reliance on mass produced foods and things such as that, yet I am unsure as to whether or not believe that all of those things are true or it can come from over analyzing the movie, which might be common for a movie such as this. I am not that aware of the going ons of Italy and its higher positioned leaders during the time of the second World War or I guess the reign of Mussolini so I do not think that I am one to really understand the subtext if there is any.
I really don't know what more to say about this movie. It's fucking Salo. I guess one thing that might be easy to wonder is what would have been Pasolini's follow up to this. Prior to Salo, he had done three films that grouped as the Trilogy of Life whether or not that was his intention, and maybe this was the beginning of another: the Trilogy of Death. It was also interesting to hear about the mood of the filming, which for the most part was rather upbeat, which might have been the only way this could have worked. All of the cast had a good time even with all of what was going on, all of the things that were being filmed. I don't know what to make of that, just like the movie as a whole. It is a wonderful movie to look at when it focuses on the scenery, even if it does share some of its bleakness with the desaturation of colors, removing most signs of life and hope from the film. I don't know if I will even convince myself to watch it again but I know that it'll stick with me for quite sometime and maybe even question things about myself that I don't think I should.
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