Minio's Ramblings on Cinema

I just looked it up again, since it's been a while now, but I am actually pretty surprised to see that Dialectic of Enlightenment was not included in the bibliography at the start of the film.



I think another interesting avenue of interpretation would be to look at how the film is, in some ways, a failure. As I understand it, Pasolini intended it to be something unassimilatable by consumerist culture (following the "pornographization" of the Trilogy of Life), but it most certainly has been in the years following its release---just look at how many people want to see it because it is "shocking" or "gross" or whatever. In other words, beginning with the premise, sort of like you imply, that people fundamentally enjoy this sort of content rather than get repulsed by it.

The disturbing and disgusting stuff is skilfully sampled so that it never goes overboard. Pasolini really controls the levels of debauchery to pull the viewer in, playing with the viewer's expectations.

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San Franciscan lesbian dwarves and their tomato orgies.

Pasolini's Salo has Horkheimer written all over it. Clever move, as minio noted, by Pasolini at drawing in the audience but withholding the explicit material which thankfully meant that his film does not exploit the victims or audience unlikely an exploitation film. It feels as if Salo was Pasolini's abhorrence with his own desires which he explored in his Trilogy of Life. Yet, the failure is precisely that - caught between the trappings of pure fascination and repulsion, coupled with grappling the tension against fascism given his turbulent relation with the Italian Communist Party, Pasolini drew a relationship between desire and power which turned out to be highly problematic in theory. If only he had properly read Nietzsche by way of the French thinkers Klossowski and Deleuze, he would have presented to us a more accurate thesis.

In line with that, none of the libertines actually look happy/truly aroused at any point in the film (as far as I can remember).

I wonder if the desire/power claim might have more credence if the film is viewed as a forward-looking criticism of consumerist capitalism/cultural homogeneity than just reflecting on Italy's fascist past.

As I understand it, it was originally intended to be two films---one on Italian fascist power and the other purely focused around Sade.

GIMME MOAR HK FILMS WITH BLUE LIGHT GIMME GIMME IM ADDICTED

Export dubs are better then the original version of the movie, prove me wrong

If you have no respect for the autochthons nor care for the integrity of the original work, then by all means, the export dub is the way to go. Nothing better than hearing home-grown boys Joe and Timmy flexing their vocal chords while trying to pretend they'll ever be as accomplished as Asian actors.

Watch the Big Boss original version with the original score and dubbing. I dare you.

Watched. It was so-so. My least favorite Lo Wei film so far, tho.

How was the score and the dubbing?

Now watch the American version "Fists of Fury"

It was OK.

Nah, it's wasn't good enough to watch a different version of it.

GUYS MINIO JUST ADMITTED THAT THE DUBBING AND THE SCORE OF THE ORIGINAL MANDARIN VERSION OF THE BIG BOSS WAS TOO TERRIBLE TO WATCH A DIFFERENT VERSION

I merely admitted the film as a whole is not good enough to warrant a rewatch. I don't need the 'funny' English dubbing to know this.

Maybe it would've been better if it was dubbed in English? Just saying.

Even if it would, my point wasn't that any film is better in its original language quality-wise (although it's almost always the case), but that films should be judged in their original versions as envisioned by creators. A dubbing (maybe unless produced by the very creators) takes away from the original experience. It's just like watching a fan recut of a movie and saying you've experienced the actual film. Nope. This is not the cut the director envisioned. Maybe the fan edit is BETTER in terms of quality (e.g., it cuts off boring scenes or makes editing better), but it makes the film cease to be the original work you set out to evaluate in the first place.

I think this is one of the things about art appreciation that is the most difficult for people to grasp. That it is somehow better if it caters specifically to what entertains them. That we shouldnt have to get bogged down in the ideas or impulses of an artist if they aren't our particular flavor. Just give us the good stuff. All the time. But only my kind of good stuff.


But the actually important
value of art is (mostly)not in it currying favor with the audience, it is in the audience giving time and room to wrestle with what the artist is giving us. For better or worse, we should ideally be moving towards the art, instead of the art having to come to us. Otherwise, all we will ultimately get back is a reflection of who we are pretending that we ideally are. Basically lies. Or at least just enough bang for our buck so we don't even have to wrestle with whether or not everything we watch is a pile or bullshit meant to anesthetize us.



Now that doesn't mean there isn't room to be purely entertained. And I'm not even against things like fan edits or the like. But when you have a general cultural trend towards the audience dictating what and how things get made, and large swaths of people literally taking offence if a film doesn't meet their specific requirements because an artist does something which hasn't been pre approved by some idiot committee somewhere...it begins to say a lot about a society.


Basically, it's the kind of culture which eventually begins to tilt towards people wanting their news to cater to their world view, or to have their partners live up to their ideals instead of actually just being who they are, or demanding that their artists pass some moral entry exam in order to be fit for consumption.


Basically, it placates a society into being a bunch of delusional and spoiled ideological brats.


Or whatever. Watch whatever you want, people. At this point the rot has sunk so deep, I doubt there is any coming back.

Yeah but what if the original version is a sin to cinema. Take for example: Police Story 4: First Strike. 5 different languages in one film.

It's really just a one hour long video at the end. All the evaluation and stuff is kinda useless. Movies are made to have a good time, not to make 250 notes about the work the percussion composers did.

That's a narrow-minded approach to cinema but I realize that's what most people think.