1968 ‘Teorema’ Directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini
A wealthy Italian household is turned upside down when a handsome stranger arrives, seduces every family member and then disappears. Each has an epiphany of sorts, but none can figure out who the seductive visitor was or why he came.
Théorème, Skandalen i Milano, Theorima, To theorima, Teoréma, Teoremat, 테오레마
dick so good that it leaves you with a pitying feeling of emptiness once it disappears from your life
Lack of self-worth. Lack of ego. Lack of motivation. You're an artless fucking coward. So am I. Cold heart. Even colder shoulder. Desire for sex. More of a desire for chastity. Meaning in the space between words.
Storytelling through the shadows, vision in motion/motion in vision; a film of paradoxical principles (an Outsider somehow stimulating the outlet of positive-yet-harmful values from within a sacred territory), Pasolini loved his sex but the film is never erotic as instead he explores the pure fundamental nature of two bodies, each equally tangled up with the other (emotionally and physically). Belief systems are dangerous but believing in nothing is equally as harmful and Pasolini makes a case for both ultimately settling on... sex? love?…
wow love this alternate version of call me by your name where the entire family is seduced by oliver & then they all have a mental breakdown after he leaves
The first film I've logged twice on Letterboxd, and one of my very favourite movies of all time. One of the highlights of that rich, rich period of cinema, of the heyday of European arthouse, which unlike so many of those comes not out of navel-gazing but of intense engagement with the political and cultural spirit of the times, in dialogue with Marxism, existentialism and some profane manifestation of the divine. It's a mysterious and beautiful film, and so thematically dense that on a second viewing I'm only unravelling parts of it - there's a beautiful puzzle at its centre as to the films precise meaning/s and mysteries, that like those impenetrable classics such as L'Avventura or Last Year at Marienbad can haunt, enlighten, provoke and endlessly transfix its viewers, offering further rewards on subsequent viewings, studied and analysed at length but still always keeping its cards close to its chest. A masterpiece of the absolute highest order.
the only movie that dares to ask: what if god wanted to have sex with you?
and then subsequently: what if your bourgeois soul had already been so thoroughly emptied that having sex with god destroyed you?
The circling theory among viewers deals with Pasolini's "inconceivable" attempt to merge Christianity and Marxism in a single feature-film. Yet, the result is magnificent, provoking, seductive, and in love with visual language and ambiguous imagery, highlighting scandal in the eyes of any given society. Brilliantly made. Who needs words when the images speak for themselves?
99/100
[Spoilers: this movie is wild and I'm gonna talk about all of it.]
"I realize now that I've never had any real interest in anything. I don't mean anything grand. Just the simple, everyday interest my husband takes in his work, or my son in his studies, or Odetta in family life. I've had nothing like that. I don't know how I lived with such emptiness, yet I did. If there was anything at all, some instinctive love of life, it was withering away — like a garden where no one ever goes. Actually, that void was filled with false and wretched values, an appalling jumble of misguided ideas. Now I see: You filled my life…
Pier Paolo Pasolini’s “Theorem” is where mathematics and poetry meet; in rhythm, between heartbeats of the divine.
“Theorem” is a departure from the greater share of Pasolini’s filmography, which interchanges between the subproletariat ragazzi and the classical parable. “Theorem,” instead, centers around a bourgeoisie Milanese family that is visited by a beautiful stranger.
The mysterious figure, played by Terrence Stamp, is given little context other than that he is clearly an embodiment of the holy. He comes to each member of the family in their turn; receiving their benediction in the form of whispered frustrations and sexual congress.
Each of the family faces their own crisis of mundane mortality. With such comfort in their upper class, they are unable to…
it's like a weird, early version of Melancholia where Terence Stamp plays the titular planet and it's all about the bourgeoise.
By 1968, Pier Paolo Pasolini had made a significant impact on the landscape of Italian cinema with his works of poetic realism and iconoclastic subversion (as well as a respected and textually faithful adaptation of the Bible). Here, he proposes a bold Marxist-Catholic thesis on the power of spiritual and moral interruption. Not only his opus, but in my opinion, his most profound and substantial piece; with Teorema, Pasolini sets out to show the effects of bourgeoisie boredom, sexuality, Communism, religion and transcendence through cryptic allegory and a strikingly minimalist storytelling style. Terrance Stamp (and it’s no coincidence Pasolini cast such a recognizable and attractive film star for this role) plays a mysterious unnamed stranger whom—upon appearing seemingly out of nowhere—disrupts the…
