- Pier Paolo Pasolini’s The Decameron
One reason I found this spring’s Pier Paolo Pasolini retrospective so valuable was that it marked the first time I considered Pasolini’s cinematic output as a continuous narrative. The Italian poet-novelist-public intellectual-director was one of the great political artists in film history—not only because of the content of his individual films, but because he recognized how his films functioned societally. Some of Pasolini’s films stand in response to contemporary cultural trends (Love Meetings, Porcile), some challenge long-standing prejudices in Italian society (Mamma Roma, Teorema), and other films, made in response to the public reception of his work, functioned as autocritiques. Only this year did I come to understand that Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom belongs to this third category. Appalled that his “Trilogy of Life” (The Decameron, The Canterbury Tales, Arabian Nights) had inspired a cycle of soft-core porn films, Pasolini created Salo, in part, to express his disgust over the commodification of human bodies in the age of mass media.
- Shia LaBeouf and Stacy Martin in Nymphomaniac
