Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom

Fantastically twisted and shocking metaphor for fascism. Sade retold through a lens of Dante and set in the short lived republic or Salò. What is the relationship between victimhood and complicity, power and the justification of it through itself, a society of consumers and citizens under totaliterialism, fascist rule and anarchy? Powerful!

> *"Fascism is not the cry of the mob. It is the silence of the study, the equation of the torture chamber."*

Pier Paolo Pasolini's final film is an ordeal and an intervention. It transposes de Sade's fantasies to Mussolini's Salò Republic, creating a laboratory to demonstrate that absolute power is a cold, bureaucratic engine of consumption.

### The Architecture of the Absolute
- **The Villa as Panopticon**: A sealed universe of total control. The rulers are bureaucrats of atrocity.
- **Narrative as Bureaucracy**: Atrocity is organized into three "Circles" (Mania, Shit, Blood), each preceded by storytelling that becomes policy.
- **The Body as Resistance**: The human body is the last frontier. The "Circle of Shit" is the end-point of power: the consumption of the oppressed's very waste.

### Performances as Ciphers
- **The Rulers**: Bored, aging men. Their evil is administrative, not passionate.
- **The Collaborators**: Soldiers, pianists, servants. Their moral numbness is the true horror.
- **The Victims**: Their screams and silence are the raw data of humanity under power.

### Scenes That Etch Themselves
[spoiler]
- **The Lecture on the Law**: A magistrate justifies torture with the calm logic of a professor.
- **The Wedding**: A grotesque parody where sacrament is murdered.
- **The Final Spectacle**: Victims are executed on a balcony as guards watch through binoculars—implicating us, the audience, in the gaze.
[/spoiler]

### The Ending's Silence
[spoiler]After the killings, two guards dance a silent, formal foxtrot. Life continues, absurd and indifferent. The machinery of power pauses, but does not break.[/spoiler]

★★★★★ — A moral and artistic triumph. An inoculation against the passivity that enables fascism. Unwatchable. Essential.

I think this movie is great!
I was reading some comments and I think they all fit perfectly with the author’s aim: he wants you to puke, he wants you to be completely disgusted by that society and he definitely wants you to say:”Once and Never Again” fascism!

This Pier Paolo Pasolini masterpiece, a masterful visualization of an aberrant practice previously reserved for literature, is an extraordinary problem film, twinned with Nagisa Oshima's "Ai no Corrida".
A mad rich man locks up boys and girls in a castle for perverted scatology, rape, and grotesque and violent murder. At the time of its release, this film caused controversy, both domestically and internationally.
Pasolini's remix of the masterpiece novel bequeathed by the Marquis de Sade, the king of perversions.
The final scene symbolizes this perverse microcosm.
It has become a cult favorite, partly because Pasolini was murdered.

Really powerful social criticism, I found it less blasphemous and way more acceptable, due to the critical stance and the artistic value, than other recent films where instead sexuality is commodified.

Watching this film was a unique experience. Disgusting, uncomfortable, incorrect. A journey I will never forget.

Didacticism is forced down your throat, amongst many other things.

Naturally, upon watching this film, I felt disgusted. However, such cinematic work is a reflection of a period when movies catered for more than just repetitive and superficial entertainment, but as a space for thought and provocation. Here we see what human liminality, cruelty and insanity looks like from Pier Paolo Pasolini's equally complex personality. Combine this film with Come and See (1985).

A wonderful, powerful film. A statement. And yes, I agree with the others, it really turns your stomach.