Hello, anyone (everyone), and welcome to 
The Week I Review
My name is Alec Kubas-Meyer, and today
I want to talk about a movie:
Pier Paolo Pasolini's Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom
One ground rule: I'm not going to be showing any footage from the film, and if you don't know why...
You will.
And now, some facts:
1: You don't forget Salo
2: You can't forget Salo
And 3: You shouldn't forget Salo
These truths are self-evident from the content
of Pasolini's final film as well as
the context in which it was made,
and now the context in which it is being played
I have seen Salo three times
I think the first is burned indelibly in 
my memory as much for its horrors
as for the pad thai I was eating at the time
And I believe that there was a second
viewing in that same living room without
pad thai or any other kind of food, as I
remember being prepared for what was to come
This [most-recent] time, there was popcorn, 
and I was as ready as you can be
I was in a movie theater: The Metrograph in NYC, 
and it was being projected in 35mm
This was less than 72
hours ago if you are watching this video
as soon [as] it goes up, and much much less
than that if you are in my living room
watching me right now
I hemmed and hawed
over the decision to buy a ticket
The Death of Moviepass previously marked
the end of my visits to that particular
theater, and I asked people I knew and
even a Facebook group I take part in if
it was a good idea
Part of this was a matter of timing
I wanted to finally see Alfonso Cuaron's
Roma, which was playing in 70mm
further uptown during overlapping times,
and I definitely didn't want to see Roma first
But a late night Roma screening
was added, and based on the absolutely
nothing I knew about it, I thought maybe
it would be a nice palate cleanser
And while I wouldn't go that far, I will say
that it makes for a more appropriate
double feature than I had expected
It's also amazing and will likely be remembered 
as one of the best films of the decade
(Five Stars)
Back to Salo, and back to the title of this video: Salo [is] the best awful movie
The word "awful" historically has two meanings, 
and Salo fits both
It is awful in the modern sense of the term 
in that it is absolutely horrific
When the credits rolled, a man sitting next to me said, "That was disgusting"
It is awful in the archaic sense [in] that it inspires awe
That same man then said, 
"I don't think this is even parody"
(More than that in a bit)
"I think that just like happened or happens... It's real, man"
There's nothing quite like Salo: a statement 
that shall remain true, I think, in perpetuity
The absolute depravities depicted here are the typical purview of films less interested in, say,
exploring the impact of fascistic power upon an unsuspecting and undeserving population
than they are in just making you regret your life
decisions
They shock for the sake of shock, whether their creators would cop to that or not
But in the work of the Marquis de Sade, whose's 120 Days of Sodom, Salo loosely adapts
Pasolini saw what he called the "choreography of fascism"
And that perfectly encapsulates the 
film that he made
Because every single movement in Salo drives towards the central thesis, simply enough:
Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely
It wouldn't be unfair to consider Salo a
bit pompous, being that in its opening credits
It lists an "essential bibliography" of writers and philosophers
whose work could serve to illuminate its
intentions further
And I can understand how someone might see that and think that Pasolini was just obfuscating
his desire to direct some disgusting imagery 
under the guise of philosophy and intellectualism
But there is a reason that Salo is in the hallowed Criterion Collection and, say,
Cannibal Holocaust and a Serbian film are not
Cannibal Holocaust is a fairly
significant film, being really the
progenitor of the found-footage genre
and using some of the same marketing
tactics that The Blair Witch Project
would exploit nearly two decades later
It also has a very clear meaning, one
that is made explicit in the final moments of the film
(You know for those who are too distracted by the actual animal murder to notice)
But that rings hollow, because of the content... see: actual animal murder
Likewise for A Serbian Film, the writer for which I am, bizarrely enough, Facebook
friends with
It doesn't have a particular historical significance like
the others, but it has seen a similarly
extreme reaction and justifiably so
And while it can be seen as a direct 
 descendant of Salo's psychosexual politics
A Serbian Film works very hard to make 
sure that it is the most brutal version
of its theme that it can be and, like 
Cannibal Holocaust, revels in that brutality
It's a horror film first and a message movie... eventually
Maybe
Salo isn't that. Salo's horror feels almost
incidental: The scenes are brief
And the camera is dispassionate: matter of fact
It doesn't bask in the carnage or linger
just a little bit too long
much more time is given to segments where
atrocities are described by the "storytellers"
women all dolled up and so
joyfully detailing traumatic experiences
from their youths as a way to sexually
charged the atmosphere
It's disturbing, to be sure, but the worst of it is
described for the audience rather than depicted
And it's honestly not as dour
as one might expect
Seeing it this time in a crowd, there was
one actual moment of laughter in the
theater and a few more that came close,
including two puns that I imagined work
better said aloud than as subtitles
It's not a "light" film by any stretch of the imagination, 
but it is also so much less dark
than it could be considering what it is
When the man next to me said to
his companion "It's not parody, etc."
I assumed he was attempting to sound 
Very Smart
Unfortunately, he was confusing parody
for satire, but he is right to see it as
some kind of Comedy of Horrors
The set, as recounted in the genuinely fascinating short documentary that accompanies
the Criterion release was an unexpectedly 
fun place to be. People were joking and
laughing and enjoying themselves
Particularly during the most horrible
scenes
But, thinking about it, it actually 
feels right that they would be
Sometimes, the only response to atrocity is levity
And when you are depicting the greatest
atrocities, laughter might be the only way to cope
And so we return to the context for that depiction
The decision to transplant the Marquis de Sade's France-set story to the final days of the
Mussolini fascist government was Pasolini's
He directed the film at a time where he saw a society rushing back towards fascism
His brutal murder, committed before the film even released, seems to indicate that he wasn't wrong
His work, then, is a reality that he
understood but also one that he believed
was about more than just his own time, a
reality that spans decades:
The 1940s, The 1970s...
The 2010s
Watching Salo in 2019 adds a
new layer of unnerving
It feels like the kind of thing that could never happen
while also being the kind of thing that
has definitely actually happened and may
well be happening right now
Whatever the conspiracy theorists
involved in pizzagate
imagined was going on in the
non-existent basement in that DC restaurant,
it may well have borne some
resemblance to this film
The experience of watching Salo in a theater on an
aging 35mm print is radically
different from seeing Criterion's blu-ray
restoration in the comfort of one's living room
The damage to that print
adds a layer of artifice, and the size of
the screen makes the fact that, say, the
dialogue is ADR'd poorly far, far more apparent
The seams in the film itself
become clearer on the big screen
This combined with the horrendous seats in the Metrograph
(I switched positions at least 15 times over the two hours)
results in a viewing experience that is almost entirely outside of the film itself
You never really get immersed, and I think that may be the best way to see it
For one: it's easier to watch
Being on the outside, the most disgusting scenes
are slightly more tolerable
But really, it's because, in that context, Salo
becomes a series of questions that you,
as the viewer, are constantly forced to
ask about how and why and who and what...
None with clear or necessarily good
answers
It becomes a two-hour mind game, and after the credits roll, you're still playing it
Because it stays in your head forever
I first saw Salo during a
period in my life when I was trying to
see everything on those lists of most
shocking films of all time
your Cannibal Holocausts and August
Undergrounds and the like
Among them, Salo stuck out as something entirely
unique and not for people who just want
to see the most depraved imagery ever
committed to celluloid
It contains some of that, sure,
But if that's what you're after you'll leave 
disappointed if not outright frustrated
You must have more than a strong constitution
You must want to engage
with the ideas that Salo puts forth
To think about its metaphors and philosophies...
maybe even read that bibliography
Thank you so much for watching the first video of 2019
If you liked it, that's awesome! 
If you didn't... I'm sorry?
If you want to see what comes next, 
please subscribe
I hope to see you next week
