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PASOLINI
Director: Abel Ferrara Cast: Willem Dafoe, Ninetto Davoli, Riccardo Scamarcio, Valerio Mastandrea, Roberto Zibetti, Andrea Bosca, Giada Colagrande, Damiano Tamilia, Francesco Siciliano, Luca Lionello, Salvatore Ruocco, Adriana Asti MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:24 Release Date: 5/10/19 (limited); 6/21/19 (wider); 6/28/19 (wider) |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 27, 2019 Nothing was unique about the final day of the life of filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini, except for the fact that it was his final day. That day is dramatized in Pasolini without any significance or flourish, save for the type that the man himself brings to it. That is the way it eventually goes. One night, you're going through your routine, and 24 hours later, you are no more. Things are left undone. Stories are left untold. Relationships of a lifetime or less simply stop. Ideas, memories, and work are all that remain. Screenwriter Maurizio Braucci and director Abel Ferrara don't necessarily establish that the film will be about the final 24 hours of Pasolini's life, but we can certainly garner that from context. He's working on his final film. He's discussing films that we know he would never make. He awakens in the morning to the news of a man's murder, under circumstances that would be similar to his own. In a way, the film tells us everything we need to know about the significance of this day for Pasolini, played by Willem Dafoe, by telling us nothing. It's a perfectly ordinary day, and since it's a narrative, we assume that, by the end, something will make this day far from ordinary. Because we know how the filmmaker died, we suspect that will be the far-from-ordinary finale. Until that point, the filmmakers give Pasolini the only thing that matters to him: his voice. He is interviewed twice about the intention and impact of his art—once on camera and once in person, with what turns out to be unfulfilled promise to give more thoughtful responses in written form the next day. He spends time with his friends and family. He goes into detail about a novel he's writing, which is all about the significance of stories, and the concept for his next movie, which is all about looking for answers and realizing that the process is an eternity of waiting. There are all of these grand ideas and promising concepts, and at the end of a regular day, they both are no more and carry on without the man behind them. That is all there is to Pasolini, but in simply depicting the ordinary day of a man of such creative influence, the film taps into something existentially terrifying—and, maybe, a little hopeful. Copyright © 2019 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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