SALO is an allegory for Mussolini’s rape of his own country and through
the humorless debasing violence and sadism whispers a prescient warning for all
of humanity, everywhere, anytime.
The film is set in an isolated Italian villa which is ruled by four
depraved men who usher in the age of the spiritual apocalypse: the repression
of religious acts is not what makes this ordeal immoral…it’s the debauchery
that erases the victim’s essence, that voids their humanity, their suffering no
more important than that of a crawling insect, recognized for only the
physiological thrill it imparts upon their anatomy. These men are the little
gods of their own world, recruiting a chosen few who help to control and
pervert their young and delicate prey. This villa is haunted by the spirit of
Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Treblinka, et al, where absolute power is wielded by
criminals who torture and taunt helpless victims for pleasure, where the laws
are changed without notice, the punishment swift, brutal, inescapable, where
the inmates have no chance to survive intact…if at all.
Director Pier Paolo Pasolini films mostly in medium and long shots that
helps to emotionally subtract the viewer from the narrative turpitude;
otherwise it would be too much. When he does film in close-up we are shocked: a
mouthful of feces, a young girl’s slit throat, and a woman’s laughing visage
while off-screen a young boy is molested. There is no humor here in Pasolini’s
film; there is only the rank stench of shit and decay, like the open pits at
Ohdruff full of bloated corpses. Ennio Morricone’s soundtrack is composed of
foreground music; a redheaded woman plays the piano during the depraved
storytelling sessions, or a radio that blares some asynchronous tune beyond the
frame’s border. These storytelling sessions imprint their violent fantasies
upon our minds in a way that actually showing the act cannot. Indeed,
imagination can be a cruel weakness.
The rumble of Allied bombers counts down the days of this tyrannical
regime and they rush to fulfill every insane desire. Eventually, even one of
the cruel participants is overwhelmed and destroys herself; she is the
musician: it’s as if Pasolini is saying that even Art has its limits, which can
be a malignant internal metaphor for SALO itself. The torture scenes that end
the film are viewed from a distance through binoculars, each of the four rulers
taking turns as witness and master. The acts are unspeakable. The pain is
unbearable. The smiling faces of the torturers are contorted by this animal
cruelty and yet they remain human. And the most frightening aspect of SALO is
that these abuses are perpetuated, not by faceless monsters, but human beings.
Final Cut: (A)
