Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom

Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom

1975

Director: Pier Paolo Pasolini

Starring: the most uncomfortable two hours of my life.

My usual modus operandi for writing these little blog pieces is as follows:

1. Watch the film in question, giving it my full attention, and thinking critically about what I can say about it as I watch it.

2. When I feel ready to write about the film, be it immediately following the viewing of the film or a few days later, put the film on for a second time and have it on in the background while I write so as to remind me of scenes/moments/thoughts I want to comment on.

I shall not be holding to this strategy for today’s film, and the reputation of the film in question is more than enough to tell you why.

The story unfolds in 1944 Fascist Italy, where several powerful men, accompanied by some aging female prostitutes and young men that they have decided are their guards, kidnap eighteen young teenagers and take them to an estate.  What then proceeds is a non-stop sadistic (fitting, as it was based on a story originally penned by the Marquis de Sade) horror story, as pain, rape, humiliation, and eventually torture and murder are in store for the unfortunate teenagers.

Ladies and gentlemen, I wear it as a fucking badge of honor that the one and only time I saw this film was in a theater.

Why?  Well, back when I was borderline obsessed with getting through the 1001 Movies list, Salo was unavailable on DVD.  Or VHS.  Nowhere could one find a copy of it at a reasonable price, and I wasn’t about to pay two hundred bucks for an out of print laser disc copy from ebay.  Turner Classic would hardly air this film. 

And then the Dryden, as it always does, came to the “rescue.”  In the summer of 2007, they had a screening of Salo.  What was slightly unusual about the screening is that the Dryden took greater pains than normal to warn the audience about the nature of this film, and had a strict “No one under 18 admitted” policy.

So, because Salo graces the pages of 1001 Movies and I had no other options, I traipsed out to watch a film I knew would horrify me.  Fantastic.

The Dryden is not an enormous theater.  It seats 500 and has two sections, an orchestra section and a balcony.  The screen itself is moderately sized; it’s not a giant screen in the slightest.  I mention this because I nearly always choose to sit in the orchestra section to feel closer to the film.  Because the screen isn’t enormous, if I sit in the balcony, I feel too far-removed from the film to have that immersive movie theater experience. 

Although I hadn’t seen Salo before that night, I knew its reputation and before I sat in my normal spot (back row center orchestra), I paused.

Did I *really* want to be close to THIS particular film?

No.

Balcony it was.

I physically distanced myself from this film before I had even seen it, and god, I’m glad I did. 

What do I remember of Salo?  I remember sitting in that darkened movie theater and cringing.  Physically cringing.  I didn’t go quite so far as to put my hands in front of my eyes, but I did start pulling a turtle and trying to hide myself in my hoodie, my body curling in on itself as a defense mechanism.  I grimaced, I tried to turn away, and then it eventually became a question of simply making it through the movie.

I remember never having felt so goddamn uncomfortable while watching a movie.  This was a level of discomfort that no war movie, no bizarre experimental film, and no film that has anything to do with pets (all of which are my least favorite kinds of movies) had ever put me through. 

I remember it finishing, the lights coming back on, and thinking, “Thank god.  Time to get the fuck out of here.”

I do not remember the exact plot, and I’m fine with that.  I do not remember all the details of all the scenes of sexual humiliation, and I’m fine with that.  I do not remember character’s names, and I’m fine with that.

I am perfectly fine with never seeing this movie again.  Ever. 

Hell, even reading a detailed description of the plot on Wikipedia was too much for me, and I wound up only skimming it. 

I mean, what else am I supposed to say about a movie where a girl is punished for crying by being made to eat human poo? 

The other film I think of when I think about films dealing with humiliation is John Waters’ Pink Flamingos.  That’s another film that I don’t enjoy, but I’ll say give me Pink Flamingos over Salo any day of the week.  At least Pink Flamingos is rife with camp and tongue-in-cheek attitude that lessens the feeling of horror.  Sure, it’s obnoxious, but at least it has an intent of comic outrageousness, and that coats the humiliation just a bit, making it easier to get through.

Pasolini is so damned unapologetic about what he puts up there on the screen in Salo that it feels as if he is purposely torturing the audience as well as the cast of characters.  There is no attempt on his part to “make it go down easier.”  Nope, he’s saying, this material is hard, and I’ll be danged if I make it easier for you.

Salo is getting a low score for me, but I’m not giving it the lowest possible score, and here’s where, oddly enough, I feel like I need to explain why.  (Funny, me explaining why it won’t actually get a one out of ten.)  Because, as repugnant a film as it is, I don’t feel as though it’s repugnant just for funsies or by accident.  There is intent here, and there is anger here, and there is passion here.  Underneath all the horrible scenes set to film in Salo, Pasolini has a message about corruption and power and perversion.  It’s not pretty to sit through, but it’s undeniably there.  What’s more, it’s well-constructed film.  Awful, yes, but Pasolini knew what he was doing in terms of cinematography.  There’s a reason that this is called “an art film,” because it honestly looks like art.  Sometimes horrible, horrible art, but art nonetheless.  So I must give Pasolini his due and admit to Salo, despite its awfulness, is well-imagined awful and made with the intent of being awful and with purpose.  (I’m giving the side-eye to films like Vinyl which seem to have absolutely no intent whatsoever here…)

I mean, if nothing else, I can appreciate that the above shot is pretty. 

Did I have to see Salo before I died?  I’m not sure.  Frankly, given the enormous reputation of the film in film circles and the immediate reaction the film gets whenever anyone brings it up in any conversation, I begrudgingly admit to being glad I’ve seen it, if for no other reason than I can meaningfully participate in said conversations.  Do I need to see Salo again before I die?  HELL NO.

Once was more than enough.

Arbitrary Rating: 2/10.

Halloween (because I am unoriginal in my timing of posts)

Halloween

Director: John Carpenter

Starring: Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasence

1978

Reposted from three years ago on my old site

I just had the most delightfully creepy experience of watching Halloween in a theater last night.  In the dark, with the movie on a gigantic screen, surrounded by fellow film-lovers Halloween aficionados, the strength and quality of the film was clear, as well as its ability to genuinely creep you out.

The plot is simple: Psychopath Michael Myers escapes from a mental institution and returns to the house where he grew up.  He then stalks and terrifies a group of teenagers, lead by Laurie Strode (Curtis), on Halloween night, while his doctor (Pleasence) hurries to track him down.

Really, that’s it.  That’s all there is.  And yet from the very first shot of the film, this is a creepy movie.  In the first shot, Carpenter establishes the style he will use throughout the film; point-of-view camera work, unsteady, almost hand-held photography, meant to put you inside the unsettling head of Michael Myers.  The first shot, practically one very long take (I believe there is a hidden cut in there somewhere) is a bravado shot, starting from the outside of a house, then looking through windows at scenes on the inside, then in the house through the back, up the stairs, into a bedroom, then back downstairs and out the front door – all supposedly shot as young Michael Myers as he kills his older sister in 1963.  This camerawork establishes Carpenter as a force to be reckoned with.  He is not afraid of breaking tradition for something as simple as a teen horror flick.  It’s a breathless opening to the film, exhilarating, and, given its context, unsettling.

The point-of-view camerawork is one of the major cruxes of the film.  Nearly all the time, the POV shots are of Michael.  You know where he is and what he’s doing.  You’re him watching Laurie.  You’re him watching a young boy.  Carpenter lingers on his long shots in the first half of the film, before night has fallen and the terror escalates, as Myers watches Laurie walk down the sidewalk.  The uncomfortably long shot has you, the viewer, screaming “LAURIE, LOOK BACK!  TURN AROUND!  HE’S WATCHING YOU!”  Carpenter wisely does not cut these too short.  The sinister atmosphere is in the interminable length, not in the shadows or darkness.

When you’re not in Michael’s POV, hearing him breathe (another vastly disconcerting aspect of the film), you’re watching him appear and disappear as if from nowhere.  The young children that Laurie is babysitting keep on talking about the Bogeyman, and, well, YEAH, Michael Myers IS the Bogeyman!  He stands, staring, across the street, or through a clothesline.  The characters see him, standing and staring.  The characters look away, then look back – and he’s gone.  Where did he go?  What’s going on here?  Who is this person with the utterly unnerving blank white face and mechanic’s jumpsuit?

There is a significant relationship between Hitchcock and Carpenter in this film.  The doctor’s name is Sam Loomis (helloooo, Psycho!), the young boy that Laurie is babysitting is named Tommy Doyle, the name of Jimmy Stewart’s police detective friend in Rear Window, and then, of course, there’s the casting of Jamie Lee Curtis, daughter of Janet Leigh of Psycho infamy.  Beyond these sly references, however, the relationship continues to the overall feel of the film.  Hitchcock famously once explained how he defined suspense.  The story goes that Hitch asks us to picture a table, around which four men are playing poker.  In an action movie, he said, you watch the men play poker, when suddenly a bomb explodes from under the table.  That’s action.  Suspense, on the other hand, would start with the same four men playing poker around the table, Hitch argued, but then the camera cuts to the bomb under the table.  Cut back to the card game, then recut to the bomb.  In suspense, you are aware of the danger in advance, and the suspense is achieved because you do not know exactly WHEN the danger will strike.  That is what Hitchcock did so marvelously, and that is what Carpenter manages to achieve in Halloween as well.  Thing is, most typical horror slasher flicks follow the formula where, for the first half of the film, you meet the characters and the film establishes how normal and safe their lives are.  In the second half, the killer appears and starts wreaking havoc.  This formula is NOT played out here in Halloween.  You see Michael Myers throughout the entire movie.  There is no initial set-up; Myers is stalking from the very beginning.  You see him constantly, watching people, waiting… but what is he waiting for?  He’s clearly dangerous, but you don’t know what he’ll do or when he’ll strike.  You saw him out the window, but then he disappeared – is he in the room now?  The first onscreen death (other than Myer’s sister in the opening shot) isn’t until about two-thirds of the way through the film.  Until that point, Carpenter is literally turning the screws and ratcheting up the tension notch by notch.  We keep seeing him BUT HE’S NOT DOING ANYTHING!!  The lack of action, more than anything else, is maddening in terms of creating truly effective suspense.  You’re waiting, waiting, waiting for Myers to strike… so much so that by the time he finally does, you jump out of your seat.  Hitchcock would be proud.

There are numerous brilliantly choreographed sequences in the film where a character JUST MISSES seeing Michael Myers.  The doctor turns to the camera just when the car that you know Myers has drives by in the background.  A character on the phone looks out the window, then looks back, and we see Myers in the window – but when the characters returns to the window, Myers is gone and we didn’t see him leave.  These lovely little sequences fit beautifully in to continually remind you that he’s out there… watching you, eluding capture, waiting to strike.

The weakest parts of the film are the performances.  You can tell that Carpenter cast young actors unaccustomed to making film.  As Jamie Lee Curtis’ first film, she does a good job, but definitely has some wooden line delivery.  Laurie’s friends, though, are more laughable and much less capable.  My husband and I mercilessly mock the “Totally!” girl.  There is not exactly prodigious acting talent in this movie. 

Almost more famous for the spate of slasher films it spawned in the eighties than for the film that it is, Halloween is truly a cut above the rest of its ilk.  It’s unnerving and disturbing without being bloody, gory, or vulgar.  Personally speaking, I have a relatively low tolerance for blood and gore and I seek my scary thrills not from violence but from atmosphere.  Halloween is absolutely dripping with atmosphere and creepiness.  Although the violence is downright tame by today’s torture porn standards, I would argue that Halloween is a better film and a scarier film for it, because the thrills come from suspense and not from blood or shock.  Forget the sequels; this is the original, and it’s a masterpiece.

Arbitrary Rating: 8.5/10.  I am NOT a slasher film fan, but I really enjoy this one.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

1977

Director: Steven Spielberg

Starring: Richard Dreyfuss, Melinda Dillon, Teri Garr, Francois Truffaut, Bob Balaban

In the summer of 1991, my parents packed up our Dodge Caravan, threw me and my sister in the back seat, and set off for a six and a half week cross country adventure.  We went from New Hampshire to Kansas then got as far southwest as the Grand Canyon, then swung north to complete our loop.  I mention this because a very significant, very important stop along the way was (as you’ve hopefully figured out by now) Devil’s Tower National Monument in Wyoming.  Naturally, one doesn’t go to Devil’s Tower without understanding its cinematic significance, and that means that I had already seen – and loved – Close Encounters of the Third Kind by that early point in my life.  I have loved this movie a very long time indeed; it’s high time I try to do it some justice in blog form. 

[FAIR WARNING: I get a bit spoilery in my discussion of this film, mostly because I love it and its finale so much.]

Strange things are happening.  Military planes reported missing in 1945 are showing up in the Mexican desert; ships are showing up in Africa; sounds are heard over India; unexplained lights are being seen over Indiana.  Single mother Gillian (Dillon) has her young son Barry taken from her by the lights in the sky.  Regular family man Roy (Dreyfuss) witnesses those lights first hand when he’s called by work to deal with a power outage.  His wife Ronnie (Garr) and children watch helplessly as Roy becomes more and more obsessed with these lights and the possibility that it might be aliens.  Meanwhile, government agents, including Lacombe (Truffaut) and his cartographer slash English interpreter Laughlin (Balaban), are witness to the alien signals, and plans are underway as to how to best deal with the possibility of an alien visit.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind is the embodiment of everything I think of when someone says “classic Spielberg.”  When I was younger, I didn’t really understand what it was about Spielberg that set him apart as a director, but in these last few years, after watching hundreds of films and writing about hundreds of films, I understand better what the term “Spielbergian” means, and Close Encounters has it in spades.  It’s in the nearly nonstop litany of gently comedic family moments (the toothpaste one being very good), even as Roy’s relationship with his family deteriorates.  The use of the Budweiser beer jingle on television being the in-scene musical accompaniment to Roy’s breakdown, or how Barry’s childhood toys cheerily sing and clatter as he’s being abducted.  The amusing yet threatening reveal of government agents rolling out in Baskin Robbins and Coca Cola trucks.  Spielberg is very good at making you laugh while something serious is going on, better than any director I can think of at the moment. 

There’s also no shortage of stunned awe in Close Encounters, something else I consider “classic Spielberg.”  Given that this is a film about alien encounters, you would naturally expect a feeling of bewilderment, but no one does bewilderment like Spielberg.  Right from the get go, there are tons of close ups on the faces of those who have encountered something they haven’t seen before, and it is mostly through these, their reactions, rather than the encounter itself, that Spielberg communicates the wonder of the experience.  We don’t really need to see what Roy is seeing as long as we can read his awe in his face, all lit up and smiling and wide-eyed.  This sense of awe is paid off in a big way in Close Encounters during the conclusion, especially after Spielberg carefully makes you sit through Roy’s anguish in the first half.  Roy is so utterly driven by something he doesn’t understand that it rips his family apart; the sense of fulfillment when we finally get to see Roy get his desperately sought answers is incredibly satisfying.  He went through so much pain, it makes me happy to see him so happy in the end.

Speaking of Roy, his story drives Close Encounters, and I like that it’s not a wholly happy one.  Poor Ronnie, watching Roy go mad.  I’ve gone both ways on how I feel about Ronnie; sometimes, when I watch Close Encounters, I’m angry at her for not standing by her husband through a difficult time.  Other times, I feel nothing but pity for her, watching her husband descend into what appears to be lunacy, and finally having to strength to do what is most likely best for her children.  And frankly, that I’ve felt both ways about her goes a long way towards the great characterization in Close Encounters.  Even though Roy gets his wish at the end and finds his way to Devil’s Tower, I never forget that it was at a cost.  I always think of Ronnie and Roy’s family, just as little Barry is reunited with his mother.  

And oh, the finale!  Close Encounters has a brilliant one.  More often than not, movie finales or climactic sequences are rather brief, maybe five to ten minutes or so, and to be fair, this is usually appropriate.  But Spielberg doesn’t cheat you in the slightest on the finale of Close Encounters; it’s a full thirty minutes and has its own smaller storyline.  I love the initial gasps and awe of seeing the first three alien crafts, the tension of communicating with them through music, and the complete joy when they answer back.  Like the government agents and scientists who applaud and cheer when those three ships fly off, you think the encounter is over and it was a success.  Ha ha ha, thinks Spielberg, you ain’t seen nothing yet!  There is the “light show,” and then the mother ship, and then the abductees – another great fake out by Spielberg, when you’re expecting to see aliens – and then finally, finally we get a glimpse of the aliens themselves.  The finale builds its own tension throughout and it’s just marvelous.  It’s a spectacular final act.

 

 

I’ve also long had a fascination with codes.  Some of my favorite stories, books, television episodes, and films have to do with cryptography.  I think that “The Janus List,” the season 3 finale of Numb3rs, is, frankly, one of the best hours of television I’ve ever seen because it’s ENTIRELY to do with codes and code-cracking.  Suffice it to say, a lot of my fascination with this stems from my early introduction to Close Encounters, and the scene where Laughlin the cartographer deciphers the alien message (and then the unforgettable rolling of the globe down the hall) is memorable in the extreme.  But it’s not just that scene in Close Encounters that deals with codes, although that one is the most direct.  The entire film feels a bit like decryption; Roy must find it in himself to figure out “what this means.”  It’s not a literal code, but an emotional one.  He’s been sent a message in his soul, and he has to somehow determine its meaning, and by god, I love watching him do it.

Apart from the very good Gustav Holst John Williams score (OH SORRY NOT SORRY), Close Encounters is also fucking awesome for having one of the most ingenious uses of film music of all time.  Once, on my old site, I wrote a series of pieces about the different ways films use music and my favorite examples of them.  The way I see it, there are four different categories of music in film: the film musical, the original film score, the use of previously written music as a scene accompaniment, and “in-scene” music, where characters produce or interact with the music in some way.  It’s in this last category that Close Encounters excels.  Being a musician and a lifelong fan of music in general, I adore the conceit that human beings use music to communicate with alien life.  That music is truly universal.  Written and spoken words have their role, but when encountering beings so incomprehensibly different from us, music makes such perfect sense as a means of reaching out.  The theme is lovely and simple as well, and who doesn’t love it when the alien ships finally respond in kind?

Additionally, Close Encounters remains a big reason why I will always irrationally love Francois Truffaut and his movies, and why I’ll always be willing to cut him all kinds of slack.  Richard Dreyfuss may be the hero of the film, but Truffaut steals the show.  His character has such an aura of powerful calm, and he’s the guy who stands up for those called by the aliens in the end.  He is empathy and tolerance embodied.  He is goddamned cool.  How amazing that Truffaut agreed to be in Spielberg’s film, and what a great job he did with such a cool character.  (Plus he has one of the most awesome lines of the film – “They belong here more than we.”)

It’s one thing to talk about favorite movies, and another to talk about favorite movie scenes.  While I truly love Close Encounters, I don’t think it would make a list of my Top Ten Favorite Films.  It does, however, have the honor of having one of my Top Ten Favorite Scenes.  I’m not even entirely certain why, but the relatively short scene where Lacombe and Laughlin go to India and hear the people chanting in harmony and ask them where the sounds came from gets me every time.  Every damn time.  It sends shivers down my spine and brings tears to my eyes.  There’s something about the men singing, so insistently, so beautifully, and it’s the first introduction of the musical motif in Close Encounters.  It finishes with the absolutely perfect shot of all the people pointing up to the sky.  I love that scene.  Absolutely love it.

Finally, I have to mention the general treatment of the concept of the close encounter in this film.  We have plenty of movies where aliens land on earth and then promptly proceed to blow it up.  Close Encounters couldn’t be further removed from these types of films.  Everything about alien contact is treated with gravity and seriousness; all right, so Spielberg injects some of his trademark humor, but it never cheapens the experience of making contact.  Few films have had the courage to approach this topic with such seriousness (Contact and The Day the Earth Stood Still spring to mind), and even among this small pool, Close Encounters is different because of how positive and optimistic it is.  Whereas The Day the Earth Stood Still is (somewhat) realistic, it is also incredibly downbeat about human beings’ abilities to maturely communicate with life beyond the planet Earth (to be fair, with definite justifications).  It’s uplifting, then, to watch humanity play out an entirely different tale in Close Encounters, one that shows that we CAN man up, so to speak, and not immediately default to violence and warfare.  That we have it in ourselves to have a peaceful interaction with something utterly foreign.  Close Encounters is a message of hope.

In my humble opinion, this is Spielberg at his finest.  Spielberg has shown in the last two decades that he is obviously capable of doing gritty, violent, and realistic dramas (Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan) but… I think I prefer younger Spielberg for sheer entertainment value.  Think Jaws, think Raiders of the Lost Ark, think Close Encounters.  The sheer joie de vivre in these films is off the charts.  They are all engaging and entertaining, and they are everything that makes watching movies fun.

Arbitrary Rating: 10/10.  Duh.