Rating: 5/5
Hooptober 8.0 | 6/34 | Countries 6/6 | Italy
To the almost deaf you have to shout; and to the almost blind, you have to write in very large letters. — Flannery O'Connor
1944 ~ 45, Northern Italy, during the Nazi-Fascist occupation
In the Italian Social Republic, also known as Salò, four wealthy men sign an agreement, beginning with marrying each other’s daughters and continuing into a roundup of young men and women. The four men carefully choose who will attend the palace. There, the men and their accomplices will perform sadistic torture for their pleasure.
It’s impossible to state how difficult this is to watch. There is no preparation for it.
A gay Marxist filmmaker, Pasolini knows the line between the ritualized fantasy of S&M and the real thing. One occurs with mutual consent and care. The other is the political reality of a Fascist state.
This film does not depict a true story — it presents a dark allegory of the covert nature of Fascism. To bear witness is to be complicit. There is no passivity.
Here, the film presents its atrocities with banal, geometric compositions.
Though diegetic music comes and goes, a deep rumbling rises slowly throughout the movie, culminating in a deafening roar and silence.
The silencing is the essential part. It is silencing any wants beyond those the masters give them. The wealthy men divulge their philosophies of hostility and will to power. Like all Fascist movements, they believe they are the true Anarchists and rebels.
Salò remains an important film because Fascism and anti-queer politics are alive and well. We may have grown numb to the banality of their existence, but as long as it exists, we are complicit in its power.