Teorema

A somewhat enigmatic and ambiguously symbolic film by Pasolini. But it's meaning(s) seems obvious. First of all, that money do not promptly bring eternal happiness, you have to find your own meaning in life. The rich bourgoise family have money but no purposes, haunted by depression, and live utterly pathetic lives. The stranger, representing a kind of god, a prophet, a mad variable that bursts into bourgeois normality, irrational that upsets the rational, extraordinary that destroys the ordinary and every bourgeois convention. Terence Stamp is perfect in the role of the stranger who represents change, inner discovery and the awareness of the inner emptiness to be overcome. The bourgeois family, laid bare and by now alone with themself, will not be able to overcome the knowledge of their own nullity, it will implode without escape in a definitive explosion. Everyone falls into the void of a useless past, apart from the servant who accepts a destiny of holiness and manages to find a real role in the world.

This is Pasolini's primary anti-bourgeoisie film and is sort of a complementary companion of Luis Bunuel's "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie." While Bunuel's film attacks the European post-war middle class (slightly different from America's middle class, though just as apathetic and selfish) with mockery, humiliation, and eventually destruction, Pasolini takes a more soulful route, revealing the hidden desires of a class stifled by social dogma and propriety. Rather than turn them into effigy, he allows them to have epiphanies, realizing their inner hollowness, and taking different paths to self-fulfillment. "Teorema" means "theorem," and in this case, the mysterious, beautiful stranger embodied by Terrence Stamp offers proof of a certain Italian bourgeois family's misgivings. Pasolini here offers a lucid statement, less political than Bunuel, but just as poetic. His execution, however, is dry and hokey, as Stamp encounters each family member almost mathematically. While the actors provide genuine emotion (particuarly in facial expressions, which Pasolini, in his entire body of work, has shown overwhelming appreciation for), the structure of the film is so tight that he almost sucks the life right out of his message. It's a curious film, though, not completely lacking in entertainment value. In a way, it plays out like a sonnet or other tightly structured poem type. Recommended is "Porcile," made by Pasolini, with similar themes, but presented more organically.

This is the most gentle and poetic film that Pasolini directed. The characters, the location and the narrative are symbols. Words in poetry can express many emotions, truths and philosophies, and so do the characters in Teorema. The general meaning of this film is open to discussion. In my view The Visitor (Terence Stamp) represents love, and love in this regard can be inspiration, devotion to another person without personal benefit. When The Visitor shows the family another truth, and then abandons them, they are left in dispair, and are unable to return to their former way of living. I think the family represents people living in a capitalist system. Pasolini was a Marxist and he directed this film in 1968, a revolutionary year in which the youth of Western Europe (and a part of Eastern Europe) revolted against their governments and wanted to build a society based on new principles. This is a very relevant film for unpoetic times.

Watching Teorema for the first time in 2017 it gave me a chill by the influence this movie clearly had on "Apartment Zero" (1988) - A film I only discovered last year but it has become one of my favorites. I know "Apartment Zero" so well by now, that at times it felt (felt is the operative word)I was in their same universe. They are both socio-political psycho sexual tales. Terence Stamp and Hart Bochner even look related to each other. Colin Firth represents a Country in decadence with a past of elegant pride, Massimo Girotti represents, for me, exactly the same things for different reasons in different ways but they are both seduceable in the eyes of the stranger. To think that Teorema was made in 1968 and Apartment Zero in 1988, boggles the mind. Mine anyway.

Pier Pasolini creates a surrealistic, dreamy mood in the story of a stranger who proves to be a life-changing catalyst for an entire family. The stranger doesn't say much, but he really doesn't have to. The beautiful male visitor is played by Terence Stamp, at the height of his striking good looks. He manages to seduce the entire family, and functions as a miraculous religious figure in the process. The sexuality is really of the gay male variety, but the women of the family manage to "beard" the total extent of Pasolini's intentions. The film also serves as a criticism of post-war industrialized Italy and its depersonalizing cultural destruction. Lots of haunting imagery. Also, it's one of Pasolini's more "watchable" films. Nothing too disturbing here in comparison to some of his other movies.