Customer Reviews

Teorema

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

..Proving theorems is a central activity of mathematicians. Note that "theorem" is distinct from "theory". (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Pier Paolo Pasolini's "Teorema" (1968) is a fable that tells how a handsome young man (extremely attractive Terrence Stamp "with the eyes of an angel and the grin of the devil") stays as a guest in the house of a wealthy factory owner and seduces one after another all members of the household - the maid, the teenagers son and daughter, the wife, and the father (in this order). When released in 1968, the film had divided believers and atheists as much as critics. Some of Pasolini's comrades-Marxists were also infuriated by this attack on their ideology. Many viewers were disturbed by its removing sexual taboos even though sex is handled very tastefully. It is more a symbol of connection and closeness to God (or it could be to Devil, we may only guess). Made almost forty years ago, "Teorema" seems to be simple and puzzling at the same time. It reminded me Ingmar Bergman's movies from his "Trilogy of Faith" which sums up Bergman's own philosophy regarding religion and God - "God has never spoken because He does not exist". In Bergman's world where God does not exist, communication and understanding are not possible and everyone is locked in their loneliness like in a cage. In Pasolini's film, God sends his angel to a chosen family. He has spoken to them and known them but then he left them. Did they become happier? Is that possible for a human to keep on living like nothing happen after the encounter with God?

I watched "Teorema" for the first time few weeks ago but I still think about it trying to understand what "theorem" Pasolini tried to prove? I also was thinking about the films that were inspired by or reminded me a lot about "Teorema". I've mentioned Bergman already. Luis Bunuel with "Nazarin", "Viridiana"," Belle de jour" (1967) - the mother's transformation in "Teorema" reminds about the film immediately, and "Le Charme discret de la bourgeoisie"(1972) come to mind. I was also reminded of Andrei Tarkovsky. The visual style, camera work and the use of music in "Teorema" seem similar with Russian Master's. His last film, "Sacrifice" may be the one closest to Pasolini's film.

I would never say that everyone must watch "Teorema". It is a very unusual film that could be easily dismissed as ridiculous and dated or it would be thought of as absolutely brilliant and mysterious. I have not decided yet but I can't forget it.

P.S. April 7, 2007 - It's been several months since I saw "Teorema" and now I believe that it is brilliant and belongs to the the best films ever made. One can meditate forever on its depths and mystery, and that's the sign of a great work of Art for me.

One star; just because of the lost 6 minutes of the movie.
Why don't the studios let us see the movie as the director has intended to show. After all this is a 40 years old art movie, not a porn flick.
I will never buy a Koch Lorber film again.

Can I just be honest here and say that I'm not a huge fan of Pasolini's films. I have seen Accatone, the gospel according to matthew which was pretty good, and mamma roma which wasn't bad either. For some reason I could never truly appreciate his films until I saw Salo and realized that he was brilliant. But that was like once in a blue moon. Now by chance I saw Teorema and was instantly impressed. It's definitely freaking awesome and what's most interesting is that most of the acting is based on body language. It's very effective!
The storyline you may think as out of date but i feel it stands the test of time. How many moments have we had where there's one certain experience that forever changes our lives for better or for worse. In this case, it's one person who deeply affects the "rich" family.
It's well worth your time to catch this.

Teorema is a penetrating and merciless critique of the bourgeoisie and its false, hypocritical values. This movie is a splendid poetic and ideological essay on the crisis of this social class. After receiving a visit from a "divine" guest, who appears in the likeness of a beautiful young man, a family of industrialists decides to donate its factory to the workers. The mysterious guest makes all members of the family fall in love with him and then suddenly abandons them, leaving each member in a chaotic state of mind. Upset by this strange mystical and sexual experience, the bourgeois are incapable of resuming their normal life and scatter around the world, victims of an existential diaspora that will lead them to solitude and desperation. The movie is a cruel metaphor of the inability of the bourgeoisie to experience true religious feelings. The characters live inside a confused and unresolved universe, dominated by dry materialistic values and by a false, hypocritical and wretched consciousness. In this movie Pasolini transports on the screen the social chaos of 1968, that he interpreted, with great clairvoyance, not as a real clash between classes, but as a sterile internal struggle within a falsely revolutionary bourgeoisie. (From the back cover of the original tape)

Pasolini made several strange and interesting movies in the late 60's, but 'Teorema' is surely the best. It features some of the most beautiful camera shots of the director's career. The subject matter is very unique and somehow gets under the skin - this is the great mythic-religous Pasolini's rendering of a modern spiritual figure. The man has the power to change the lives of all those around him - a sort of walking god-head.
It is a difficult film to describe - and it is even more difficult to say why I like it so much... All I can say is this is one of Pasolini's best movies.

from the movie :

"I realize now that I've never had any real interest in anything. I don't mean some special interest. Not even ordinary (piccoli e naturali) interests, like my husband's in his work, or my sun's in his studies, or Odetta's domestic cult (culto familiare). I had no interests. I don't know how I could lead such an empty life, but I did. I there was anything... some instinctive love of life it dried up like a garden where nobody goes (come un giardino dove non passa nessuno). That emptiness was filled with false, mean values (falsi e mischini valori) with an awful lot of wrong ideas (idee sbagliate). Now I realize it, you've filled my life with a total interest. So in parting, you're not destroying anything I had before, except perhaps my reputation for chastity, which matters... But what you yourself gave me, love in my empty life... by leaving me you're destroying it completely."

"By knowing me you made me a normal girl. You made me find the right solution for my life (soluzione guista della mia vita). Before I didn't know man, but I was afraid of them. I loved only my father (Amavo soltanto mio padre). But now, in leaving, you're making me worse than before. Did you want that? Now the pain of losing you will cause a relapse more dangerous than the sickness I had before this brief cure your presence brought. Before, I didn't understand this illness, but now I do. Through the love you gave me I've become aware of my illness. Now how can I replace you (e adesso come potro sostituirti)? Is there anyone else? I don't think I can go on living (Credo che io non potro vivire).

now, do u need more comments?

n the film TEOREMA, in a final scene, we see the maid, Emilia, suspended in the sky above the casina-- a row of farmhouses. The image smacks of Fellini's imagine of the Virgin Mary at the beginning of the film LA DOLCE VIDA (1968): the Virgin statue hangs in the sky above Roman rooftops as a helicopter transports it over the crowded suburbs. Peasant vs. bourgeoise. Country vs. city. The sound of church bells vs. the noise of a helicopter engine. In both cases elevation of a woman, in both cases funny, in both cases not an intellectual question but rather a visual joke asking for the audience's gut reaction. Like, "what's going on?" The image breaks the narrative. In Fellini's case setting up what is to follow; in Pasolini's case, closing off what has already occurred.

I don't know why I missed seeing Pasolini's Teorama (Italian word that translates `spectacle') earlier in my film viewing life. It's a moody film requiring the viewer to fill in the blanks, and there are plenty of masterful blanks, both visual and spiritual, in the sexual-coming-apart of a wealthy Milanese family.

The wife (Silvana Mangano) is exquisite; she wears a Sassoon haircut, designer dresses, and never removes her make-up. Her eyes are dark almonds painted on a furrow-free porcelain face.

The soundtrack: silence, morning doves, birds, church bells, sirens.

Hip Brit actor, Terrence Stamp, plays god--some critics say he is the devil. His arrival is in Milan is simply introduced by a letter which arrives while the family is dining: Guest arrives tomorrow.

The next thing you know. The guest has been there. He's seduced the maid and is now in the bedroom with the son. Stamp is not a predatory character, but a force each family member is absorbed by, as if they are thirsty plants and he is water.

If you love 60s films, Pasolini, or Italy don't miss this one. Beautiful, fog laden scenes of the family modern country house let you se how the Italian nobility live. The family's palazzo in the city is surrounded by what starts out as a greedy expanse of grounds that slowly shrinks as the film progresses, moving the palazzo closer to the street-- a pedestrian street. The shrinking coincides with the father's giving away his factory and refers back to the film's first statement: "The existence of a middle class prevents a worker revolution." (Things are too cushy and everyone aspires to middle class.)

Each of the Milanese family member's encounter with the guest, transforms them. After the guest leaves, the once-uptight wife drives around in her high-fashion outfits looking for young men that resemble the guest: she looks for false gods? The daughter becomes catatonic, but assumes the rapture of orgasm on her face: blown away by god's intensity; no one will be as good? The son becomes an artist: having been touched by the divine, he reached the depths of his sensitive soul? The husband gives away his factory and has sex with everyone and anyone: life is meaningless without god? Emilia, the maid, floats above the countryside and inspires her fellow peasants: god is not dead?

The reason Terrence Stamp character is god and not the devil? He is the male version of the maid: blue eyes, brown hair, same facial expressions, same color clothing. He inspires, transforms, and inspires awe.

It is like the sequel of Pasolini's "Gospel According to Saint Matthew". It is a direct transposition of that young man who is bringing love to the world in the class-struggle-ridden city of Milano. If love came to a bourgeois family what would happen?

The mother would discover what she has never experienced and she would become an insatiable love seeking, we mean of course sex chasing, woman picking young students in the streets, male of course, to have a quick experience no matter where, no matter how, provided it is quick and complete.

The daughter would just get catatonic after the discovery of that physical love she did not know before and she can't imagine with anyone else after having had that relation with the angel of love, the archangel Gabriel of course. She will end up being taken away to some institution.

The son will have discovered the love he was looking for but that makes him different and he does not want to be different, so he will just promote his difference to the status of art and he will start painting beautiful abstract things with no resemblance to anything at all, in one word his own desire for the forbidden in society but a dream that is allowed by that angel of love, the archangel Gabriel of course.

The maid will start eating stinging nettles and making miracles, floating in mid air over the roof and being worshipped as a saint able to deliver te cure to all evils. And that will have to stop one day and on that day she will have herself buried in some kind of building site to disappear in her own tears under tower blocks.

Finally the father will be the one who shows the way to salvation. He will get rid of his factory and will give it to the workers. The class struggle will win and the workers will be able to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat, a hammer and a sickle, or vice versa in Italy. And then he will be able to answer the call of some young male well endowed angel and to undress in Milano's main train station, get rid of all superficial appearances and finally follow his angel of love into the desert, yes the desert, because that's all there is for the bourgeoisie and then he will realize his mistake, he will realize one must never yield to class struggle because it is an impasse, but all the same the command of Jesus to the rich to get rid of their riches and distribute them to the poor and then follow him is a blind alley, an alley for the blind, an alley that leads nowhere at all except perdition.

Just like Jesus brought love to Jerusalem and ended up on the cross, betrayed by his own disciple, capitalism is an impasse but negating capitalism is another impasse. There is no way out of that vision of society cut in too without any love.

And that's why the film has aged tremendously. Class struggle or even social war, liberation wars that end up in pure terrorism, the belief that the world can be cut in two antagonistic halves lead to nowhere. It is a myth, it is a dream, not even a utopia because it does not bring liberation but it brings totalitarianism, dictatorship, terrorism, including the civilized terrorism of that new age theory that society is a set of interconnected networks and it is enough to drop a stone, or a bomb, in one nodal point to paralyze the whole system, like blocking the flow of gas and diesel, to bring society dons on its knees in about four weeks.

The four weeks that are supposed to shake the world and end up in failure and blood or frustration like with the Tamil Tigers, the FARCs, Ben Laden, the ETA in Basque country, and all other pirates in the world. The world is not divided in two antagonistic halves. To believe that is to lead everyone to the desert, the absolute waterless, cool-less, food-less desert and not for forty days but forever and ever. By the way that vision of Jesus and Christendom is absolutely old fashioned, passé, dead.

Pasolini's message in 1968 was absolutely dramatic and realistically pessimistic. How could anyone believe the extreme communistic, Trotskyite, anarchistic movements were going to try to take over and some will support that, not seeing it is pure feudalism and these new heroes are nothing but war lords. And when they try to behave like professional trade-union leaders they become amateurish generals of social war, class against class.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID

In this version one of the first scenes in the movie is out of order. the party scene should come after the scene of the father leaving his factory. the BFI - British Film Institute - version of this film is accurate, the color is much better, and it includes a very good commentary track for anyone interested.
Furthermore this Koch-Lorber version contains a bunch of advertising at the beginning that the viewer is compelled to watch.

Spanning a period of twelve years, six devastating and demolishing movies about the decadence of the western world were made without scruples or hindrances. Viridiana by Luis Buñuel, La Aventura by Michelangelo Antonioni, The servant by Joseph Losey, The shame by Ingmar Bergman, Zabriskie Point by Antonioni again and Teorema by Pier Paolo Pasolini.

Into the home of a bourgeois family walks in Terence Stamp (the embodiment of a modern Don Givanni), a stranger. each one of the family - mother, father, daughter, son and maid finds in the stranger an exit door for the fullfilment of their hidden passions and repressed vices within the boundaries of the family structure; and this stranger works out as the perfect catalyst for this purpose.

A devastating film that must be seen free of prejudices. Don't miss it!