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Two films joined by the belly, as Buñuel the critic would say, "l'ultimo lurido esperimento." The fine young cannibal (Pierre Clémenti) scuttles across a volcanic landscape and gobbles up butterfly and snake, a quick cut reveals an opulent manor in another time and place, he keels over in agony. In West Germany ca. '69, the industrial scion (Jean-Pierre Léaud) is stunted, "sleepy," more interested in flying kites than joining his girl (Anne Wiazemsky) in pissing protests on the Berlin Wall. Oh for the days of Grosz and Brecht, yearns the doltish patriarch (Alberto Lionello), in the medieval age the scraggly outlaw slays a legionnaire and enjoys a roasting beside a smoldering crater. "Contradictions are absolutely necessary," Pier Paolo Pasolini wouldn't have it any other way. The past is coarse and taciturn, the present is ornate and prolix, rebellion in one means murdering pilgrims for their flesh and in the other it means willing yourself into a coma amidst swinish tycoons. Parallel narratives for the ineffable split, an impossibility of wholeness not quite resolved by the business merger with the war profiteer (Ugo Tognazzi). Teutonic treasures, cheese and beer and buttons, "un film di Murnau." Muskets and hatchets in the desert, a certain barbarous integrity tragically conquered by the military and the church. Animal Farm, La Chinoise, 2001: A Space Odyssey... Mom's "mannerist St. Sebastian" turns out to be a pigfucker, Pasolini's nonpareil political-metaphysical vaudeville is composed of just such witticisms. (Disparate elements can have "an irresistible comic power" when put together, it is observed.) The cannibal confronts death with an ecstatic incantation ("Ho ucciso mio padre, ho mangiato carne umana, e tremo di gioia"), the devoured scion opts for oneiric wonder ("Who knows the truth of dreams, beyond that of making us eager for the truth"). With Margarita Lozano, Marco Ferreri, Franco Citti, and Ninetto Davoli.
--- Fernando F. Croce |