Original Title: Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma
Year: 1975
Country: Italy/France
Language: Italian
Number: 601
Director: Pier Paolo Pasolini
Starring: Paolo Bonacelli, Giorgio Cataldi, Umberto Paolo Quintavalle, Aldo Valletti
What do I think about Pier Paolo Pasolini's last motion picture, Salo, or the 120 days of sodom? Well it's a horrible, pervert, grotesque and soul ripping piece of a feature film. The word humanity doesn't exist, neither do mercy and neither salvation. And I can ask myself: "Does god exist". This is a movie that one should think more than twice about seeing. This was Pasolini's last film, which was released only twenty days after he was brutally murdered in 1975.
Salo is set in the year 1944 in the Mussolini controlled part of Italy, the Italian Social Republic commonly known as the Salò Republic. A bunch of upper class fascists, which includes a Bishop, a duke and a magistrate, decides to buy over a dozen of young people of both sexes, which they gonna use to practice all their nasty sexual fantasies. Only just describing them can give you nightmares. And let I just put it straight right away, there's no happy ending. Due to the year it's set in, you might think that Allied soldiers will break in and free the poor souls any minutes. But it doesn't happens. There's no light in the tunnel, except maybe the title which says 120 days. It's pure sodomizing just as the title says. One other little positive thing is that this is not a pornographic film, There's no close-ups of erected genitals . And that's probably because it's not gonna seems tempting in anyway. And it's actually the close-ups of a man's and a woman's genitals what makes it a porno film. I'm not saying that I would have enjoyed it if it was, but it might have distracted you from following the story and it's points, as many other porno films does.
There's no proof that such grusome even have taken place in the fascist Italy, But orgies just like in the movie have, in every part of the humanhistory and it's more and more shoking for each time, specially that this can happen right now as we speak, like in a basement. But in Salo it's not a basement it's a mation of sodom. There's no coincidence that the rich people are fascist, the people on earth that we know have exicuted the biggest, most terrible crimes against humanity. But my question is, whould there be any Salo if they had used other people than nazis? It would have worked with upper class people who's ordinary outside, but then it would have been to offensive towards all rich people, though Salo itself is excactly that, except most people who'd only see them as fascists, but the message is there, that's mostly because Pasolini himself was a communist, but also because his brother was killed by the fascist.
One can ask one self the question: Why? Why would anyone make such a horrible movie? The answer is very simple, to show how terrible the fascist regime was in the eyes of Pasolini. Not that I'm denying that it wasn't, because it was probably that horrible, because many people got killed. The paradox with Salo is that most of the sex slaves don't want nothing else but die. But it's also the ones that begins to accepting their masters, and starts to enjoying it all, the Stockholm syndrome.
Did I enjoy this movie? No. Did I like it? Yes. Because it's a movie that breaks boundaries of what's appropriate in films. In some cases it is necessary to do so. To get as close as possible to the people's minds and horrors. To get directly into the nightmare itself. To understand the reality of some ones pain. To get as close as hell itself. I want reality, though the plot might not be reality, the people and their pain certainly are. The fact that react with disgust makes me happy that I actually have a load of humanity inside. I would not sit next to a person that didn't do the same.
This is to date the longest review I have ever written, I could talk about this movie all night. But I stop here and conclude this movie as gruesome but necessary. I give it a Thumbs up. The only thing that remains is only to warn you. If you have to watch this movie, make sure you got no food and drink on the table, most because the horror of seeing what the people on the screen are eating, and you don't want vomit all over your carpet. One advise to prepare yourself is to read a lot about the movie before you see it. You must be scared as hell of this movie, it's eases the pain that you would have felt if you have seen this without knowing anything about it before you saw it.
Don't say I didn't warned you.
Grade: B+
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