Teorema - 1968

 Sometimes I like to read my own reviews.  I enjoy remembering the movies, and remembering even writing about them.  I recently reread my review of The Decameron.  Maybe hindsight gives rose colored glasses, but that was a movie which I really loved, still think about, and I would give 5 stars now.

It sent me on a quest to view more Pier Paolo Pasolini, and this was at my library, so I rented it..  Cool.  Plot line says Terence Stamp seduces a family in a controversial bizarre art film.  I'm into that.

The thing about this movie, really, is that it is all shot in a vague, lyrical, and I think at times purposely obtuse sort of way.  If you want a movie which has a narrative plot structure, with conventional dialogue, with a three act structure, look elsewhere.  If you want an experimental, avant garde thing which defies convention well now you're coming to the right place.  

And yeah, that plot is accurate.  Terence Stamp arrives and everyone in this family seems to be drawn to him in an illusive, irresistible way.  The first odd thing about this movie is that we see nudity from Terence Stamp in the beginning, but then no other nudity exists in the film.  For Europe and post Hayes code, I don't know why there is no nudity in this movie.  Then, after Stamp does this, each family member which he had sex with experiences a revelation said verbally, and then a reaction physically and mentally, completely unexplained.

Roger Ebert's review talks of the underlying philosophical meaning of the film, and so does the wikipedia article.  I understand that Pasolini was a Marxist, an incredibly left wing gay man in a difficut time, and I think in a way this is an attack on conventional culture, on straight laced hetero-normative society.  Not in a clear or even realistic way, and I am saying that in a fully embrasive way; insult this society til you're blue in the face, go for it.

I think my personal enjoyment of this film was mixed.  There are a lot of completely inexplicable things happening at all times which seem to want to need explanation or follow through that you do not get.  Then there's some things which you understand and they still stay with, they grind them into the dirt and you're sitting there saying enough already.  Then there's oddly stilted acting and dialogue, which makes one wonder if that's intentional or not....  It's really like nothing else.

I think this clearly fits into the broad realm of experimental and arthouse cinema, from a time when things truly were actually experimental unlike now.  These movies are very difficult to rate in any conventional way, but I will say when I turned it off I hated it and now I kinda like it more.  So I'll give it a 2.5, I guess.