Theorem Pier Paolo Pasolini (It; 1968;) Terence Stamp, Silvana Mangano, Massimo Giroti
viewed star and Shadow Cinema 1st Dec 2024: ticket – £7
transpose to now
In similar fashion to Pasolini’s final film, ‘Salo‘ (1975) his movie ‘Theorem’ is structurally grounded in a sort of mathematical logic: the systemic working through of series of equations/situations. In ‘Salo’ one step at a time, one line at a time, the group of kidnapped young people are subjected to a series of increasingly degrading and violent actions by their masters.
The victim/torturer relationship in ‘Salo’ parodies the power relations in fascist regimes and by extension power relations under capitalism. With the depiction of the casual infliction of painful physical humiliation, Pasolini keeps tight rein on the expressive reactions of his players. The victims as a group respond in a casual fashion to the systematic application of pain that is taking place around them, often chatting and laughing amongst themselves as one of their number is selected as the butt for the next round of sadistic amusement. And those selected don’t act out any reaction to what is being done to them. Flooding out mimicry of pain would be an insult to those who have suffered sadistic treatment or torture. Pasolini simply asks viewers to register what they see as being done to these people. The audience don’t need cheap acting lessons from the actors to understand the effect of physical abuse. To this extent ‘Salo’has an abstract quality. Emotional and physical expression are flattened back as Pasolini’s asks his actors to walk through the crescending series ordeals they have to suffer.
Pasolini asks the audience to fill out his metaphorical linkage between power and the infliction of degradation. Likewise in ‘Theorem’ the viewer is asked to make the link between ‘the Visitor’ and the effects he has on the bourgeois family: daddy mummy son daughter and maid. Like ‘Salo’ there is a mathematical type of progression at work in the scenario as the visitor methodically castes his influence over each member of the family and in due course we see the effect that the ‘Visitor’s’ disappearance has on each member of the same family. Like ‘Salo’ there is a certain sort of abstract effect put into play.
The visitor is never explained. He appears he interacts he leaves. An abstraction.
In the opening documentary style montage we see the workers at ‘daddy’s’ factory, protesting against their low wages. The workers understand that ‘daddy’ the factory owner and by extension his family are parasites. Parasites who live off the work of others and who live a privileged life of luxury, removed from the stream of the everyday. But their wealth, the way of life enjoyed by this bourgeois family are facades behind which there is a terrifying emptiness of meaning. The family exist to live in the big house to consume to be the boss to go through the motions of being alive. As long as they just continue as they are, everything’s Ok. They’re simply on cruise control living their lives as machines of exploitation and enjoyment.
But if they stop! Or if something stops them?
‘The Visitor’ is the intervention that brings the whole bourgeois charade to a halt. The machine breaks down. It’s what William Burroughs describes in the ‘Naked Lunch’ as the moment where everyone sees what’s on the end of the fork. We don’t know who ‘the Visitor’ is. We don’t know what he represents or how it is that one by one he castes his spell over the family. We see he is a sexual presence through the which channel he touches and permeates their being. And there’s something suggested in his calmness and the certainty with which he sees intuits and then guides their needs. But this ‘something more’ is left for the audience to think about, to figure out.
Perhaps it isn’t important. ‘The Visitor’ represents a moment of epiphany. The moment in life when people with great clarity see themselves for what they actually are: sometimes it’s ok they can live with it: sometimes it is devastating – and as with St Paul on the road to Tarsus – everything has to change.
Whilst in the moment of epiphany in the moment of the presence of‘the Visitor’ the family exist in a state of elevated immanence serene in their new found identities. As soon as the visitor leaves, they are suddenly confronted with their emptiness the parasitic loveless nature of their lives. The vistas of death nothingness and schizophrenia open up to them unless they can find a path to redemption which path is left by Pasolini as an open question.
Viewing Pasolini’s film its concerns seemed to me to transpose to our own current environmental crisis. As Bourgeois life styles consumption patterns aspirations and attitudes have spread across the Western world and its imitators, many of us have become parasites feeding off planet Earth. We are parasites devouring the environment that sustains us without thought to either cost or consequences. We own the earth so we can do with it as we want. For us there is no ‘Visitor’; no moment of epiphany only a determination to keep the machine of plenty running on, terrified of what might happen when it breaks down. As it will.
And when we are brought to a halt by our ‘Visitor’ when we see the consequences of what we have done, after the unending party, we shall fare no better than the players in ‘Theorem’: desperate atonement, schizophrenia, physical indulgence, religious fervour compulsive repetition and probably also uncharted by Pasolini, survivalist acts of indiscriminate violence.
adrin neatrour
adrinuk@yahoo.co.uk
Theorem Pier Paolo Pasolini (It; 1968;) Terence Stamp, Silvana Mangano, Massimo Giroti
viewed star and Shadow Cinema 1st Dec 2024: ticket – £7
transpose to now
In similar fashion to Pasolini’s final film, ‘Salo‘ (1975) his movie ‘Theorem’ is structurally grounded in a sort of mathematical logic: the systemic working through of series of equations/situations. In ‘Salo’ one step at a time, one line at a time, the group of kidnapped young people are subjected to a series of increasingly degrading and violent actions by their masters.
The victim/torturer relationship in ‘Salo’ parodies the power relations in fascist regimes and by extension power relations under capitalism. With the depiction
of the casual infliction of painful physical humiliation, Pasolini keeps tight rein on the expressive reactions of his players. The victims as a group respond in a casual fashion to the systematic application of pain that is taking place around them, often chatting and laughing amongst themselves as one of their number is selected as the butt for the next round of sadistic amusement. And those selected don’t act out any reaction to what is being done to them. Flooding out mimicry of pain would be an insult to those who have suffered sadistic treatment or torture. Pasolini simply asks viewers to register what they see as being done to these people. The audience don’t need cheap acting lessons from the actors to understand the effect of physical abuse. To this extent ‘Salo’has an abstract quality. Emotional and physical expression are flattened back as Pasolini’s asks his actors to walk through the crescending series ordeals they have to suffer.
Pasolini asks the audience to fill out his metaphorical linkage between power and the infliction of degradation. Likewise in ‘Theorem’ the viewer is asked to make the link between ‘the Visitor’ and the effects he has on the bourgeois family: daddy mummy son daughter and maid. Like ‘Salo’ there is a mathematical type of progression at work in the scenario as the visitor methodically castes his influence over each member of the family and in due course we see the effect that the ‘Visitor’s’ disappearance has on each member of the same family. Like ‘Salo’ there is a certain sort of abstract effect put into play.
The visitor is never explained. He appears he interacts he leaves. An abstraction.
In the opening documentary style montage we see the workers at ‘daddy’s’ factory, protesting against their low wages. The workers understand that ‘daddy’ the factory owner and by extension his family are parasites. Parasites who live off the work of others and who live a privileged life of luxury, removed from the stream of the everyday. But their wealth, the way of life enjoyed by this bourgeois family are facades behind which there is a terrifying emptiness of meaning. The family exist to live in the big house to consume to be the boss to go through the motions of being alive. As long as they just continue as they are, everything’s Ok. They’re simply on cruise control living their lives as machines of exploitation and enjoyment.
But if they stop! Or if something stops them?
‘The Visitor’ is the intervention that brings the whole bourgeois charade to a halt. The machine breaks down. It’s what William Burroughs describes in the ‘Naked Lunch’ as the moment where everyone sees what’s on the end of the fork. We don’t know who ‘the Visitor’ is. We don’t know what he represents or how it is that one by one he castes his spell over the family. We see he is a sexual presence through the which channel he touches and permeates their being. And there’s something suggested in his calmness and the certainty with which he sees intuits and then guides their needs. But this ‘something more’ is left for the audience to think about, to figure out.
Perhaps it isn’t important. ‘The Visitor’ represents a moment of epiphany. The moment in life when people with great clarity see themselves for what they actually are: sometimes it’s ok they can live with it: sometimes it is devastating – and as with St Paul on the road to Tarsus – everything has to change.
Whilst in the moment of epiphany in the moment of the presence of‘the Visitor’ the family exist in a state of elevated immanence serene in their new found identities. As soon as the visitor leaves, they are suddenly confronted with their emptiness the parasitic loveless nature of their lives. The vistas of death nothingness and schizophrenia open up to them unless they can find a path to redemption which path is left by Pasolini as an open question.
Viewing Pasolini’s film its concerns seemed to me to transpose to our own current environmental crisis. As Bourgeois life styles consumption patterns aspirations and attitudes have spread across the Western world and its imitators, many of us have become parasites feeding off planet Earth. We are parasites devouring the environment that sustains us without thought to either cost or consequences. We own the earth so we can do with it as we want. For us there is no ‘Visitor’; no moment of epiphany only a determination to keep the machine of plenty running on, terrified of what might happen when it breaks down. As it will.
And when we are brought to a halt by our ‘Visitor’ when we see the consequences of what we have done, after the unending party, we shall fare no better than the players in ‘Theorem’: desperate atonement, schizophrenia, physical indulgence, religious fervour compulsive repetition and probably also uncharted by Pasolini, survivalist acts of indiscriminate violence.
adrin neatrour
adrinuk@yahoo.co.uk
