Pasolini's "Salo": The 120 Days of Abu Ghraib

[Minstrel Boy]

Has anyone else here seen, even through your fingers, this horrific study of the fascist mind? And anyone else reminded of recent stories out of Iraq?



Pasolini loosely based his tale the Marquis de Sade’s appalling The 120 Days of Sodom, and then set the film in WWII fascist northern Italy. Sixteen children are kidnapped by the Duc de Blangis and his depraved contingent (including an Archbishop) and removed to a secluded and stately countryside villa. Immediately the children are stripped and forced to begin obedience training, where even the mere mention of God is punishable by death. For the next 120 days, the children move through various circles of degradation and subjected to torture, rape (both heterosexual and homosexual), mutilation, and death.

...

What makes the film even more horrifying is that these unspeakable abuses are all being done to children. But as terrible as it is to watch (there are parts where even the most hardened will gag), Salo is not exploitive, nor should its violence be called over the top. Pasolini’s use of graphic images serve to remind us of the recurring dangers of fascism in the real world and the moral decay and corruption inherent in limitless power.
http://www.thomasvideo.com/realdetroit/real-salo.html

[kittykitty]

1. Wow!

Military Intelligence must have used this film as their operations manual!

[DoYouEverWonder]

2. I heard they used it

to replace the Geneva Conventions.

[BigMcLargehuge]

3. it's making the art house circuit too

It played in Boston about six months ago, and I expect it to return in another four months or so. At such time I hope to see it.

FWIW Passolini was stabbed to death just after Salo was released.

[Minstrel Boy]

5. I can take a lot, but this one was tough to sit through.

An important film, though. Like a reviewer said, You should see it, but you'll never want to see it again.

[BigMcLargehuge]

8. same reaction I had to Men Behind the Sun

about Japanese War Attrocities at the end of WW2. While almost impossible to watch in a single sitting, Men Behind the Sun is one of the most powerful films I've ever seen.

[NJ Blue Collar]

4. Kick.

n/t

[KoKo]

6. Is this poster real in that it shows leashes on the captives? If so it's

just like that photo of that "Pointy Girl,Lyndie England" in the latest release on WaPo's website where she has a leash around an Iraqi prisoner's neck as if he is a dog.

Thanks for the heads up, there's no way I could see this movie, though. I barely got through reading "Lord of the Flies," because my imagination is vivid that I've not had any trouble visualizing what depths of depravity people can commit on others of their own human kind.

[Minstrel Boy]

7. Yup, it's a genuine poster.

The movie's about 30 years old. But some things, like fascism, spring eternal.