NYFF: Pasolini, or One Day of Sodom
Thursday, October 2, 2014 at 12:31PM Our coverage of the New York Film Festival continues - here is Jason tackling Abel Ferrara's biopic Pasolini with Willem Dafoe.
This is a review of Abel Ferrara's Pasolini, but let me just start by saying that I loved Bertrand Bonello's Saint Laurent. Nathaniel reviewed Saint Laurent and he was more measured in his appreciation of it than I would be - I was bowled over by its style and its sex appeal. I loved it. I went into it with next to no expectations - I'm usually indifferent to fashion bio-pics, I haven't seen Bonello's other films, and Gaspard Ulliel's left me cold up to now - but near to three hours later I was a disciple. Saint Laurent tells the story of a gay man, a creative force to be reckoned with, whose flirtations with reckless sex in the 1970s led him to a muddy field, beaten bloody...
the real Pier Paolo Pasolini... which brings us to Pasolini, the story of a gay man, a creative force to be reckoned with, whose flirtations with reckless sex in the 1970s led him to a muddy field, beaten bloody. I took the long way around but I got there, bridging the two, and I bring up the way the two films shadow each other for more than superficial purposes - it's in the part about "a creative force to be reckoned with" where I see Bonello's film sparking to life while Ferrara's remains curiously distant.
In Nathaniel's review of Saint Laurent he beautifully described one of my favorite sequences in that movie, where we watch as Yves and his coterie of stitching fiends build a gown from the ground up, miniscule bit by miniscule bit, detail by detail, until the laborious process is punctuated by a sudden snap of sartorial violence, a tear of flair, that tilts his design into pretty perfection. That process seems to me a synecdoche of Yves' entire being - we'll see it played out in everything he does.
I suppose you could list movies where a writer's shown banging away endlessly at his or her typewriter but I can't really think of an example of a movie about an artist of any stripe that hasn't been improved by making time for their creative process - that's why we're there wondering about this person in the first place. In an interview about Frances Ha I remember Greta Gerwig talking about how important it was for her to show us Frances' choreography in the end, and how much that told us about her, and I agree.
And that is where Pasolini as a film fails for me - it never gives me that understanding of why we're there watching this man. This fiery, vital artist's sense of creative life is snuffed out in favor of an often banal dedication to Ferrara's "day in the life of" dictum - I mean I know who Ninetto Davoli was to Pier Paolo but I am a queer movie geek, it's my job to know that. I'm not arguing that the details have to be exhaustively laid out for the a broad audience that's never going to show up for a bio-pic of the man that made Salo or 120 Days of Sodom anyway, but the film is too restrained, too academic - give me a reason to care, Abel! I like pasta and cute boys too but nobody's going to make a movie about me.
Pasolini screens tonight Thursday October 2nd (6 PM) and Friday October 3rd (9 PM). Previous NYFF reviews here.
Reader Comments (6)
Like I wrote about with MAPS TO THE STARS, I think this was a film that could've used a healthy dose of its director's early griminess. This is a film about Pier Paolo Pasolini's final day so where's the darkness? I wasn't a fan of the movie-within-a-movie thing where Ferrara appears to be somewhat adapting an unproduced Pasolini screenplay, and the Dafoe stuff seemed like it was only there because of the actor's strong resemblance to the man.
I was just going to ask about this one because I'm really looking forward to it. Pasolini's life and work interest me, Willem Dafe is a solid actor and it's been ages since I don't see a movie directed by Ferrara.
The first half of Pasolini felt very disjointed to me - that's partly my own unfamiliarity with some of the texts and historical events being discussed, but it was definitely a block to engaging with the film. But I thought Ferrara's passion for the man, his ideas, and how he lived his life, came through nicely. Plus, the adaptation of Pasolini's unproduced screenplay was cool, shoddy visual effects aside. Once it (or I) settled in, I quite enjoyed the experience, though I agree with Glenn that a heavier dose of old school Ferrara's exploitationist streak would've been welcome.
Glenn, I would love to make a movie about you!
Glenn, I would love to make a movie about you!
Sorry, Jason, I was thinking Glenn wrote this...but I would like to make a movie about you too.