Abel Ferrara
Pasolini

Pasolini is a 2014 film directed by Abel Ferrara and starring Willem Dafoe, a pair of aces ensuring quality. A "sinister" direction in pure Ferrara style made of fades, overlaps, dreamlike, serving a photography sometimes dry, sometimes rich, with cuts of light invading a hazy darkness and a black and hopeless night to seal the brutal murder (the related sequence being cruel and impressive) perpetrated on the cold and wet beach. Dafoe, with his angular, time-worn face and large black glasses, serves the character with extreme rigor, proving very faithful to the real PPP so much so that Ninetto Davoli said: "Willem is impressive. At times I thought I was seeing Pier Paolo".

The cast, in addition to Dafoe, also includes Riccardo Scamarcio (Ninetto Davoli), Valerio Mastandrea (the cousin and biographer Nico Naldini), Maria de Medeiros (Laura Betti), Giada Colagrande (the poet's cousin Graziella Chiarcossi), Adriana Asti (the mother) and Ninetto Davoli himself (Eduardo De Filippo).

The film received recognition with the Grand Jury Prize at the Berlin Festival. The film was also presented, in competition, at the Venice Film Festival.

Pasolini narrates the last days of the writer's life, who tragically died in Ostia, the Lazio coast, on November 3, 1975.

From the director’s notes:

"I grew up watching his films and certainly he did not grow up watching mine - said Ferrara responding to those asking him for a comparison between himself and PPP - I am a Buddhist and my teaching is to meditate on one's master: I absorbed his work and by making this film, meeting the people who loved and knew him, and directing Ninetto (Davoli ed.), I approached my master".

In the first part, we see PPP return from Stockholm where he presented the controversial: "Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom". Back in Rome, he passionately works on a new film – Porno – Teo Kolossal – which was to be played by Ninetto Davoli and Eduardo De Filippo but, as known, it was never filmed, and on the unfinished novel "Petrolio".

We then see PPP in his daily life, at home with his mother and other aforementioned characters eating, talking, drinking a glass of wine. A journalist will come to his home for an interview and during the interview, the essence of Pasolini's thoughts will be illustrated, through the answers that our protagonist will give to a soft yet polemical journalist. Pierpaolo will soon tire and dismiss the journalist by saying, ok that's enough. Leave me the list of questions, I will answer them in writing, I express myself better in writing than in words.

I found this first part rather interesting but underdeveloped. It is certainly arduous to represent a film about such a character, one of the most eminent intellectual figures of the last 60 years in Italy and the world. Still, precisely due to the breadth and scope of PPP's thought and work, I believe they could have dared much more. But it is evident that Abel Ferrara, who kept it under 90 minutes and for such a film, in my opinion, should have exceeded 120 minutes, made different choices, focusing on the last days of PPP's life until the tragic end.

It is in the second part that Ferrara's style emerges, alternating dream and reality, where dream is understood as the imaginary representation of certain film sequences – Porno – Teo Kolossal – a metaphorical work, a small divine comedy where Ninetto and Eduardo, passing through Earth's inferno, will symbolically ascend towards the Paradise, climbing an endless staircase only to realize they will never arrive, that Paradise does not exist and that there is no end either…

The film divided critics, detractors hinge on the uncertain and quirky tone of the film and the choice for Dafoe to speak sometimes in English, sometimes in Italian (and he manages well) actually confers a sense of rather ridiculous estrangement, therefore I recommend watching it in Italian with Dafoe dubbed by Fabrizio Gifuni.

I quite liked it; I recognize a visual allure and an atmosphere full of sensations that leave a mark, and although I consider Ferrara's Pasolini to be an unfinished work, I acknowledge its courage and the choice to only show us the end, as if in a meal at a restaurant you have great expectations for, they only bring you the dessert… bitter.