Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1977)

Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Poor quality sound and very dirty messy print. The transfer was not good either with film slipping and bad aspect ratio. Effects were generally pretty convincing - hope they weren't real. There was not a lot of thought or creativity involved. They just thought of the sickest things and made people do it. Most noticeable is the thought that people actually acted in this. This is impressive and bumps the score up a little. I've never seen anything like this made before it. I only watched the first half hour at normal speed, then sped it up to 1.5 speed. I got what was going on and didn't like it. This is all about humiliation, degradation and sodomy. There were also sex stories. The concept was pretty horrifying and harrowing. I didn't like it. Sick twisted and wrong - certainly not enjoyable.

I don't believe art's role is to "entertain" (although it can do that) but to engage, stimulate, inspire, confront, challenge, etc. And it certainly doesn't have to be nice about it! If a work of art does any of those things for me (and, of course, this is highly subjective), then it works for me.This is why I believe that Salò is very flimsy artistically. The craft of it, including the excruciatingly wooden acting and equally wooden script, simply weren't sufficient for me to ever suspend disbelief, and I was therefore never engaged by what was going on. There's no plot development, no journey, no character development, no emotional insight into characters. Nothing. Like its subject matter, the film itself is dehumanized. No doubt this was intentional, and its almost "anti-art" aspects are part of the film's "art" (for other people...), but its effect on me was that I was always aware that I was watching second-rate actors reading a second-rate script. And I just didn't care about any of it.The shock value was kind of minimal, too. I came to this film already aware that it focuses on horrible depravity. I watched it and saw a depiction of horrible depravity. So what? It needed a framework to have meaning and, therefore, rise above the level of a splatter movie (but see below).I don't believe Pasolini was commenting on Fascism or any -ism, but simply on the darkness within human beings and used that period of Italy's history as an appropriate context and pretext. I guess someone needed to make a film that showed this. It's been done now...If there is artistic merit to this film, I believe it's because it's so open to interpretation: Pasolini shows us human depravity, leaving it up to us to make of it what we will, to bring our own frameworks with us to give it meaning. (Some people even see a criticism of fast food in the pooh-eating scenes!) How much of this was part of Pasolini's design, though, I have no idea. But as art, it's right up there with, say, putting a mutilated animal carcass on display in an art gallery and calling it, say, "Installation 38b." That's pretty shallow art. (And, in 2018, quite dated -- which is another criticism I have of this film. Good art doesn't date.)The only real moral stand (and intellectual substance) I can find here is that by not providing a framework, Pasolini is rejecting the mind-control philosophy typical of the Fascists and other totalitarian regimes. Again, though, I'm not really engaged, stimulated, inspired, confronted, or challenged by that. But it is a nice idea.

This film shows the brutality of the human soul when power is distributed unevenly. It also portrays violence and depravity in such a manner as to allow one to witness a real distinction between our common method of filming such acts versus the reality of such acts, this film directed towards the latter. One would hope that in the future of all societies such depths of moral corruption simply would become impossible to bring forth. The atrocities to be witnessed during this viewing are something that our past has contained, but hopefully our future will not.

This is the best date movie ever made. I will be sure to watch it as a family when I have kids. Like a big steamy dinner and a movie.