Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1964
I've referenced this obliquely before, perhaps I should address it head on. Over the past year and a bit, big changes have occurred in my life, and as a result it has been suggested that it would be a good idea to develop some spirituality. My feelings toward this fluctuate wildly: sometimes I'm very open to it, sometimes ambivalent or resistant. I'm someone who very much desires faith but finds it difficult to acquire it. Sometimes I feel like I'm not wired for faith, but my therapist pointed out that I want faith to work for me like a drug, whereas in reality faith requires work. My commitment to do the work on a regular basis wavers, and it's never been particularly strong, but I trudge onward.
Film holds a special -- one might even say sacred -- place in my heart, so perhaps it's only natural that every time I sit down to watch a religious film I hold out a faint hope that it'll give me some kind of white light experience. Naturally that didn't happen. Pasolini chose to maintain his straightforward neorealistic style in order to keep the focus on the poetry of the text, but I can't say that any of the words particularly moved me or even stuck with me.
Nonetheless, the film has a certain je ne sais quois. Pasolini sets and maintains an interesting tone here: I'd call it beatific yet realistic. When Satan comes on the scene, he looks so ordinary that it takes you a minute to register who you're looking at. It's a simple touch but one that communicates something profound about the awful normality of evil. Indeed, one could say that only an atheist could make a film this good about Jesus because he focused on the humanity of the story. At their best, nonprofessional actors provide a candid, direct quality and Enrique Irazoqui (and it must be said, the actor who does his dubbing) provides that here. And there is a kind of alchemy at work here: when Pasolini cuts from Christ to the faces of his rapt disciples, something transcendent, beyond the sum of the shots, occurs.
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