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Rating: The eclectic genius and the fascinating provocative-alternative verve of Pasolini led him, as is quite well-known, not only to many, too many legal misadventures (even posthumously filled with the chilling Salò), not only to the dreary disdain of the fastidious radical chic aristocracy and bourgeoisie of the First Republic, but above all to his tragic demise. A figure of undeniable talent in recounting the "real" reality of a society that preferred to feast on the lotus and the narcotics of national hypocrisy, an artist capable of excellently blending past, present, utopia, and dystopia into a great unicuum of materialism and entirely human spirituality (and thus not merely hyperuranic and theistic), the Pasolini legend - I wish to emphasize - would be wasted even in the crude moral-value condition of these times of contradictions and denied pleasures and of pseudo-Christian-conservative taboos perpetually reiterated by high-ranking hierarchies who make vices their lifestyle. Vices, moreover, an inherent heritage of generations of humans and humanoids, hidden in the agora and exacerbated in alcoves, symbolizing a natural inclination to bodily affection uncomfortable to ideologues of transcendental purity and heavenly chastity.
With the "Trilogy of Life," Pasolini retreated until the early second millennium to research the normal leaning towards the carnal and "unclean," achieving this with the valuable aid of illustrious writers and "nonconformist" authors. With the Boccaccio's Decameron and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, he focused the research on the medieval Italian and European context, giving a voice to the imperfect yet witty and comedic "rabble," to reckless youths, to lecherous old men, and to provocative and enchanting women. Here, the expression of the carnal and the impure clashed intentionally with the fundamentalism of the religious and ideological rigor imposed from above and created amusing, erotic-comedic scenes, little vignettes where the boorish and ignorant commoners knew how to enjoy themselves and manage their affairs with singular nonchalance, even without too much cash in their purses. This is how wives forced into secluded reclusion in the gynaeceum manage to weave triangles and amorous intrigues, eluding the surveillance of their husbands, the "peeping" neighborhood, and spying gossips, young girls lure and welcome young men with open arms (and legs), university youth takes particular revenge on profiteers and smart alecks by coupling with their wives and daughters, and so forth, in a delirium of mischievous and delightful porn-intelligence.
Reaching the third and last chapter of the "Trilogy of Life," Pasolini proposed something more than the comedic-erotic format experimented in the European context. Il Fiore delle Mille e una Notte, the penultimate masterpiece before the shock of Salò, indeed presents itself as a far riskier and more complex work than its predecessors, a sort of "avant-garde" in the fledgling Decamerotic film context capable of expanding (not only figuratively) outside the walls of the Old Continent, exploring an additional curriculum of themes and adding to the trilogy a vast range of aspects, reflections, and moods. Primarily, the Pasolini version of the fifteenth-century saga of One Thousand and One Nights creates an intricate mesh of stories, narrations, and tales more vast and networked than the Decameron and The Canterbury Tales, a mesh in which the protagonists of one episode introduce another, circumscribe it as if in a flashback, and even come to conclude the entire narration; Il Fiore, then, seems less inclined to reiterate the jester-like and soft-porn mood of European treatments and ventures instead into Arab-Oriental esotericism, romantic-sentimental thread and even historical-mythological blockbuster. Also striking is the multitude of locations, cities, and places captured by the ineffable camera: beyond the Arab world and its pearls (among which the Yemeni capital of San’aa, which thanks to Pasolini's enlightening intercession, was included in the UNESCO World Heritage Sites), the director pushed as far as Nepal and the Far East, expansively broadening a vast geographical cultural fan absent in the rest of the Trilogy, almost reflecting deep cosmopolitan and multicultural aspirations.
Il Fiore delle Mille e una Notte opens a networked series of tales and stories, however managed and interlocked with impeccable structural order. For the complexity of the work, it is not necessary to analyze the chapters one by one: among the most significant is the adventure of the slave-queen Zumurrud and the master-young man Nur ad-Din (which is the frame of the whole film), the tragicomedy of Aziz - played by a Roman-tinged and scarcely Arab Nino Davoli, nevertheless a delightful and carefree contrast - castrated by the lover Budur due to his fatal infidelity towards the resigned betrothed Aziza, and the stories of Shahzamân and Yunan.
The composition and meanings infused by the Pasolini work display impeccable philosophical-moral and image avant-gardism. The accentuated and almost exasperated nudism of the protagonists (from Aziz to Nur ad-Din, passing through the minor narrations) here transforms into an almost transcendental voyeuristic game, a kind of proto-universal and hyper-human libertinism-libertarianism that escapes from the shame and hypocritical modesty of society; Arabia and its mysteries are thus framed by Pasolini as the cradle of emancipation from conventions and regulations, a world where revenge, retaliation, capital punishment, and chastisement come legally, irrespective of the crude justice of the fake moralistic law reigning in the West.
Although more "outspoken" and "scandalous" than the Boccaccian and Chaucerian transpositions, Il Fiore delle Mille e Una Notte even received admiration from judges who had to assent or not to the inevitable censorships and protests, and this was not well regarded by Pasolini himself, who seemed to have linked the validity of his creative flair to the anti-conformist and bourgeois refusal of judicial authorities. Nonetheless, the work can officially be considered among the most successful cinematic experiments of the last century, the penultimate breath of life of a man whose greatness would in a nanosecond cast into the abyss the fake moralistic intelligentsia of today's Italian showbiz.
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