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Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom Movie Review

Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom is a 1975 Italian horror drama film directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini. It’s an expectedly pointless shock movie.

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“We fascists are the only true anarchists,

naturally, once we’re masters of the state.

In fact, the one true anarchy is that of power“

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A group of fascists round up nine adolescent boys and girls and subject them to a 120 days of physical, mental, and sexual torture. I’d put off watching this movie for years and years due to its graphic content. Upon finally seeing it, I have to say that it’s nowhere near as horrific as I’ve been made to believe it is. We have all been horribly desensitized as a society with movies and pornography that an infamous film like this is not all that shocking or disturbing anymore.

So the movie ended up both being too disturbing and too tame in a way. Most sex scenes aren’t all that horrific to witness and are actually quite mild by today’s standards. The majority of the film is pretty tame. Well, the only truly grotesque sequences are the violent ones toward the end that are thankfully quite brisk and all of the imagery of coprophagia. Pasolini is both literally and figuratively full of shit – his characters are obsessed with eating fecal matter and he himself has nothing to say about any of these depravities depicted on the screen.

I have no patience with cinephiles and critics who find something more meaningful in a film like this. Fascism is bad. Yes, we all know that. But why would you go to such an extreme extent to make a point that we all know? That is the question that should be directed to all provocateur directors who just make movies for the shock value and nothing else. Some of the symbols and imagery clearly point to WWII fascism, so the movie is clearly about the dangers of fascism and the depravity of the elite, but the messaging is so simplistic and obvious and the plot is so monotonous and repetitious that the movie ended up being a shore to sit through.

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Most would praise the final sequence where the two soldiers dance and talk about their girlfriends home. They act all normal even after witnessing and collaborating in all of the atrocities before. The message here is that they and effectively we as the audience are complicit in these depraved acts and lack of humanity. This is all fine, but one scene is not enough to compensate for the rest of the movie being empty and meaningless. ‘The Zone of Interest’ did this theme of complicity much more effectively at the end of the day.

And that is the main point that I am trying to make here – the aforementioned film did not need to show graphically anything in order to be disturbing. The very juxtaposition of the imagery of this happy family living close to a concentration camp was enough to disturb audiences and make them think. Art should be sophisticated and Salo is anything but sophisticated. In showing most of the atrocities on screen, the movie as a result became less effective and infinitely less intelligent.

Salo does have strong performances. This cast of older actors effectively conveyed their sado-masochistic tendencies and most of them were very creepy in their facial expressions and line delivery. The film was at its best when it focused on the more subtle conversational scenes. Pasolini’s directing is matter-of-fact to the point that felt documentarian in its approach mostly for the worse – the pacing is slow and the movie seriously dragged throughout. There is some humorous dialogue here to make you question whether this was intended to be a black comedy, but not nearly enough to make a valid proposition for it. The production design is the only incredible aspect to this film – the mansion looked positively decrepit, creepy, but still lavish and colorful. The sound, score and cinematography are all pretty good too, but the film was nowhere near as cinematic as the director intended it to be due to its shoestring budget.

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