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Gary Indiana, in an essay he wrote about Salo for the Criterion Collection, describes the movie as "unsurpassable." A week after attending the Film Center revival, I'm inclined to agree. The movie has an insidious way of situating itself next to anything you watch afterward, making most other images seem horribly naive or downright sick. Just a few days ago I saw a commentator on CNN pushing his interpretation of a recent news item and preemptively criticizing anyone who might disagree with him. I couldn't help but think of the narrators in Salo, telling tales of horrible behavior before a silent drawing room audience and inspiring the torturers to commit more acts of brutality. (It's possible that Pasolini intended these sequences as critiques of television; he claimed the scenes of coprophagy in Salo represented his feelings about fast food.)
On Saturday night I saw an Australian movie called Hail at the Wisconsin Film Festival in Madison. That movie culminates with a graphic scene of torture, showing an ex-convict take revenge on the drug dealer who was instrumental in his girlfriend's death. Much of the audience walked out during that scene, but I watched it unfazed—the violence seemed so human, so old-fashioned in its disorganization. Yesterday at the fest I saw an American independent drama called This Is Martin Bonner, about a 60-ish divorced man restarting his life with a new job in a new town. It's a touching character study about good people who are marginalized in today's economy but manage to preserve their humanity. Watching it with Pasolini's images of dehumanization still fresh in mind, I found the characters' triumphs impossibly moving.As appreciative as I am to have seen Salo, I'm looking forward to when it no longer hangs over everything I watch. It lays bare the fundamental problem of civilization: the corrupting influence of power and its destructive impact on human affairs. At this point, every other serious film feels like a gloss or an elaboration on this crucial theme.
Ben Sachs writes about moviegoing every Monday.
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