Salo - Pier Paolo Pasolini - 1975

The Gods of Quickflix said, you will watch this. So I did. I wasn’t as traumatised as I thought, perhaps this is because I’m a child of this technology age filled with sensationalistic news and over-the-top crime television (not that I’m complaining). It was certainly chilling. I probably found the delighted faces of the men more horrid than the torture. Something more introspective about that, like a pointed note of what humans are capable of. To think we could derive pleasure from such actions, that it is capable for a human to do so, is confronting.

For all the metaphor I put in my own work, I’m not that great at picking it up in other films. I don’t know if I would have picked up the underlying political messages in Salo if it weren’t common knowledge. Again, as I am fairly young and not European*, this could be a contextual thing, where I don’t have the knowledge to make what would otherwise be a simple connection. I’d like to learn more and figure more of this out.

It’s not a movie I “enjoyed” watching, but then, a lot of the films I’m drawn to aren’t the feel-good type. It was certainly compelling, fascinating throughout its horror. 

*I am actually technically half Italian. That said, I’ve never been there or grown up with lots of Italian relatives.