Charles T
On November 2, 1975, film maker Pier Paolo Pasolini was brutally beaten, and then run over by a car, ending the life of an inconvenient thorn in the side of the powers-that-be in Italy. Pasolini was born in 1922 to a rich military father who gambled away most of the family's money, and a vocally anti-fascist mother. Pasolini became a follower of Mussolini anyway, and published a volume of poetry during World War II. Things changed after the politically motivated murder of Pasolini's younger brother, and Pasolini turned into a Communist who longed for Italy's return to greatness as experienced in the Roman Empire and Renaissance eras.
Pasolini began to teach high school. An open homosexual, he was acquitted of charges of having sex with his students, but was fired anyway. He became fascinated with the young slum boys of Rome, and the writings of political dissident Antonio Gramsci. Pasolini was a walking contradiction. He supported Communism but attacked conformity. He began writing novels and essays, eventually branching into film making with "Accattone," where he was assisted by a young Bernardo Bertolucci.
Pasolini specialized in neorealism- realistic films about everyday people with epic characterizations, but soon entered mythic film making with such works as "The Gospel According to St. Matthew," "The Decameron," "Oedipus Rex," "The Canterbury Tales," and "Arabian Nights." Pasolini's prolific writing continued as well, making him the scourge of both the left and right wings of Italian political circles. Then came "Salo, or The 120 Days of Sodom." Pasolini turned people into objects to attack consumerism in this violent tale of torture. It was to be his last film, although his next project was about a modern day St. Paul in the United States.
The investigation into Pasolini's death was hurried and sloppy. A seventeen year old male prostitute was sentenced to nine years in jail for the murder, even though no blood was found on the boy's clothes, and the Italian government chalked the incident up to just another homosexual, who was into rough sex, taking things a little too far. Pier Paolo Pasolini is a difficult subject because of his innate Italian character. When I saw this documentary, I had seen three of his films: "Love Meetings" (a total bore about sexual behavior among Italian youths), "Teorema" (a sometimes tedious surrealistic exercise), and "The Canterbury Tales" (a confusing and confused adaptation). The readings of his poetry show a passionate patriot embroiled in good but dense imagery obsessed with a perceived downturn in Italian culture. English majors, think Robinson Jeffers writing urban and political verse. Pasolini was not a Lucio Fulci or a Ruggero Deodato, shooting "Salo" to excite and exploit, this is a man who slaved over his art and thoughts, publishing a book calling for the criminal prosecution of the ruling party at that time, with passages that make Michael Moore read like A.A. Milne.
The film itself is just an hour, a detriment to such a complex thinker. Although punctuated with gory death photos of Pasolini, the viewer must do their own detective work about what happened that night decades ago. "Salo" was not the end all-be all of Pier Paolo Pasolini's life. He had plenty more to say, but not enough time to say it. The accused male prostitute recanted his story and the case was reopened. Too late for a one of a kind film maker, artist, and writer. "Whoever Says the Truth Shall Die" does do a good job introducing Pasolini to many, whether we should heed his warning that all truth opens a writer to danger and death falls squarely on the viewer.
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
07/17/23
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Audience Member
Pasolini was surely murdered (beaten/tortured to death) by fascist thugs with the connivance of the capitalist state.
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
01/24/23
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Audience Member
This is not an autobiography or film tribute of the great Provacateur, Pier Paolo Pasolini, but does provide rare glimpses of the man. Archival footage of Pasolini, his films, poetry readings, and interviews with his friends are what this short documentary offers. Pasolini was always a controversial and critical figure in Italy, so any political group would have fared better if he were deceased. Inflamatory indictments of the Christian Democrats, and his film, Salo, were released about a month prior to his untimely death. His bloody and brutal murder could not have been committed by one person (Pino), which was initially supported in the trial. Somehow, this supposition was elimintated before sentencing Pino the Frog as the sole murderer. The case was reopened in 2005, but was later shut the same year, remaining inconclusive. A tragic loss of one of the most important cultural contributors of the twentieth century.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
01/28/23
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Mike M
Six years on from Pier Paolo Pasolini's brutal murder - at the hands of a rent boy, though murmurings of a wider conspiracy persist - this hour-long documentary made a necessary attempt to reclaim the filmmaker as more than just a corpse in grim crime-scene photographs (reproduced here, in unsparing detail), who fell victim to his own desires... The analysis - from the likes of Alberto Moravia and the actress Laura Betti - is intelligent and sharp, the archive material selected with erudition. If you want a sense of just how far ahead of his time this director was, listen to the extract from Pasolini's furious diatribe against the abuses and injustices of the Andreotti regime: it would take thirty years for any subsequent Italian filmmaker to put anything similar to that on screen, and even that - Paolo Sorrentino's "Il Divo" - was finally undermined by its lack of seriousness and sincerity, the dialectical brute force, Pasolini possessed in spades. Like his films or not, he meant them, absolutely.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
09/20/09
Full Review
Audience Member
it wasn't the best documentary but it did leave some questions answered about him.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
02/17/23
Full Review
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