Pasolini

source: Pasolini

Moviecut—Pasolini

Although beautifully shot and well acted, this movie is fairly disappointing and inconclusive. It doesn't really say much about Pasolini and the oniric scenes just fall flat.

An observational glimpse on the last hours of the famed and controversial Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini, "Pasolini" is a glacial record of art and society in 1970s Italy. Willem Dafoe plays the complicated artist highlighting the man's torment and humanity. The real life Pasolini's oddball intensity is missing in this portrayal; rather, Dafoe embodies a reserved, cultured homosexual who lived the opposite worlds of cultivated society and the seamy underworld. Amidst this depiction is the backdrop of a turbulent Rome in the throes of political and social unrest. Being an Abel Ferrara flick there's nudity and some graphic sex (both straight and gay) that provides some chuckles and titillation. While not for everyone this highbrow and arty film serves as a compelling tribute to one of the most fascinating artistic figures of the 20th-Century.

Defoe is not demanded. A documentary would be more enjoyable, if this could be said.

Abel Ferrara's 2014 film 'Pasolini' is flat as a pancake. The script is an idea cooked up by Ferrar himself and writer Maurizio Baucci. Poor Wilem Dafoe, an excellent actor with a wide range, has the thankless role of Pasolini, a flat, cardboard character. Ferara's trademark is provocation: in 'Pasolini' his use of sex, for whicch Pasolini used, like Moravia as an assault on the bourgoisie, the elite, government and the church, is an exercise in werisome boredom, and seems lacking in the political punch in Pasolini's films--be they the romp in 'Arabian Nights', 'Decameron' or 'Canerbury Tales'. What does come across is Defoe as a Pasolini in his last days on earth. Ferrar engages in metaphysical double talk, and the political side of the writer, film maker and engaged militant is downplayed like a pencil ground down to a stub. 'Salo oe a 100 Days of Sodom' beca,e a cause celebre for its content as an attack on the staate and the church and its supporters, at a time of extreme political angst. In the 1970s, the Red Brigades engaged in assassinations, roberries, the murder of Aldo Moro, a scoundral time of when the left and the general feeling sensed the rebirth of fascism, which had to be stopped. 'Salo' is a bold reference to the 10 days of Mussolini's Republic before he was captured by the partisans and hanged along with his mistress, thereby ending the long reign of fascism in Italy. Ferrara engages in a cerberal and metaphysical rendering of Pasolini. And yet he is true to Pasolini as a sexual predator of young, working class youth, in a way, albeiit unexpressed, is a very upper class, famous writer who exploits the lower classes for his pleasure. (In a way a trophe one finds in Tennesse Williams' 'Suddenly Last Summer'0. And Pasolini is horribly beaten and murdered by the young men he exploited sexually, who at heart are homophobic, resent being used as a sexual object, and what's more exhibit fascist behavior. Although not mentioned: Pasolini's 'Medea' with Maria Callas as Medea; the opening scenes of this film are memorable for the great actress Callas was, declaiming the opening lines in classicla Greek of Euripides play. That lacuna is made up by the voice of Callas singing a well-known aria from 'Barber of Sevile'. Ferara use of music offers no criticism to more a plodding narrative along. The censors may have held the 2014 film back owing to prudish standards, but 'Pasolini' is hardly aemorable film. And yet, 2019 is the half-century anniversary of Stonewall, so the film may get an audience that may be disappointed.

Beautiful, direct acting and camera. very fitting to the subject at hand. wilem dafoe as the perfect cast. the sexual scenes simple, not sensationalised. 9 out of 10 and only because i crack under peer pressure, otherwise it would be 10.

Abel Ferrara's long-gestated biopic of Pier Paolo Pasolini has its congenital defect, by cast Willem Dafoe (albeit his striking physical resemblance) as the maestro, hence, the prominent anglophone dialog is rightly incongruous with its milieu and becomes more problematic because the rest Italian cast must follow suit, even for the venerable actress Adriana Asti, who plays Pasolini's senior mother, during a family and friend home-gathering, has to awkwardly keep the conversation going in her heavily accented English, that is a misstep to cut right through a naturally intimate occasion where could have spoken volumes of the internal discord. This language hitch is too big to ignore also because it is erratic, Dafoe manages to converse small talks in Italian (although the credit on IMBb listing that the voice is dubbed), but when he needs to express Pasolini's ideology, he switches to English, as he confesses during the interview with journalist Furio Colombo (Siciliano), paraphrasing here "it is better for me to write than speak about my thoughts", so Ferrara's indecision to stick to one solution chips away the film's potency. The film begins just days before Pasolini's shocking demise, but Ferrara judiciously doesn't tap into the juicier conspiracy theories spawned from it henceforth, and Dafoe's performance is restrained most of the time, pensively buries his self-consciousness of the impending quietus, his Pasolini is benevolent, intelligent and impermeable. The film only fitfully weaves flashback into its slender narrative (an 84-minute length), the sexual experience in his youth and rambling, indeterminate thoughts, but one of the merits is that Ferrara pays his reverence to piece together Pasolini's unfinished film, envisioning an idiosyncratic "messiah-seeking" journey starring Pasolini's "great love of his life" Ninetto Davoli as Epifanio and Riccardo Scamarcio as Davoli himself answering their calling and witnessing an annual heterosexual copulation ceremony (in the name of procreation) between gays and lesbians (celebrated with pyrotechnics) en route until a cosmic ending commensurate with Pasolini's own fate. The film is chromatically enveloped with a blue-tinted pall of a grubby Rome in the 70s, and when the brutal crunch finally descends on the night of November 2nd, 1975, Ferrara chooses a more pedestrian cause for the attack but injects his condemnation with one glimpse-or-you-will-miss-it shot where the homophobic perpetrators run over a badly beaten Pasolini when hurrying off the place in his vehicle, it could be the final blow extinguishing his last breath, whether it is intentional or accidental, either way, Ferrara hits home with the happening's incomprehensible cruelty. Poignancy reaches its apex in Asti's heart-rending breakdown through Maria de Medeiros' Laura Betti, attendant with Callas' stentorian threnody. Ferrara's PASOLINI is a disciple's deferential and cerebral homage to a mentor, whom he has never met and whose myth has been perpetuating around us ever since the horrific tragedy.

Well, he was a pretty weird film-maker, so it's fitting that this movie version of his last 24 hours should be packed with weirdness. Willem Dafoe is the only non-Italian in the cast: his scenes are mostly played in English, with just a few Italian phrases (and an interview in French) to remind us we're watching a Continental movie. And very Continental it is. The night before his murder we see Pasolini on his knees in front of a series of punk suburban toughs in a scene as close to hardcore as anything in his movies. The following day comprises a series of meals and meetings (with his mother, friends, movie people, his rent-boy nemesis): all slow-paced and stylised with echoes of THEOREM Pasolini's own contribution to the cinema of the New Wave. He's writing a book and visualises it in cinematic terms: it combines a vision of the Second Coming of the Messiah with a return to orgy-rich Sodom (does the pun on 'second coming' work in Italian?). And the day ends with his fateful encounter with the rent-boy and the tougher punks who will write 'Finis' to the Pasolini story. Writer/director Abel Ferrara does not venture into Oliver Stone territory to explore the conspiracy theories which sprang up immediately after Pasolini's death in 1975. So, this is film-making at its weirdest, turgid and pretentious to a rare degree, as were most of Pasolini's pictures. But this one is beautifully shot, and Dafoe gives an immersive performance (and bears a striking resemblance to the man he is playing). One maverick director's epitaph for another.

a homage. and a sketch. visual poem. and touching story. not very clear but useful for remind a splendid work. a director. and crumbs from his universe. a film who must see twice. or more. because it is a kind of puzzle. and not the presence of Ninetto Davoli or the physical resemblance between Dafoe and Pasolini is the best side but the story itself. the last days of a man in search of the real form of truth. it seems be obscure or too complicated. it seems be only a drawing and not real a coherent film. but it is admirable axis for reflection. about the themes of Pasolini's filmography. about the subjects, decisions and idealism. about Salo meanings. about sense of art. about new adaptation of the Renaissance 's ideal. about a form of revolt and freedom and fight to discover the essence of existence behind masks.

Sometimes a director wants to pay hommage to a past legend. We have seen it many times with talented directors like Tarentino, De Palma and others. You tell a story and you insert scenes like the masters and you move on, please don't ruin the mystique of masters of illusion by doing boring A DAY IN THE LIFE OF.... When you try to shoot biographical episodes, you are doing a high wire act in high winds. You are most likely to fall flat on your face and seriously injure your reputation. This is the case here. PPP was a shock jock whot reveled in visual controversy and in his writings. He was a combo of Bunuel-Dali-Picasso-Zola. To show his last day was about as interesting as reading the one word Twas and closing the book on A christmas carol. Move on people! there is NO story here