My Movie Journal is Better Than Yours

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Notes History

Date Viewed	Venue	Note
11.09.19	DVD	This Screening is part of event: DVRfest 2019 Roll #2: 1 with a bullet Salo has been in the Criterion pool since it began. I've heard quite a bit about how extreme it is so it was never something to throw on for a tuesday night or whatever. It's kind of fitting that it took rolling a natural 1 on a d20 to select this and finally see it. So..... what to say... It definitely holds up. I've seen a bunch of fucked up movies so I had a feeling going into this that it would be tamer than people let on just because it's 45 years old now and we've had stuff like A Serbian Film and Martyrs and Taxidermia... but the feeling of descent that this film delivers is pretty affecting. By the final scene it's so unrelenting and ends so abruptly... and perhaps the music makes it even worse... the light jazzy piano over everything. It's clear that I didn't get 100% of the influence, context, and symbolism at play here. Particularly the fascist stuff went over my head unless it was just a statement that unbridled power allows for unparalleled depravity. I also guess this much blatant homosexuality made people's heads explode in 1975 in a way that I, today, don't fully grasp. All in all... glad I watched it. Definitely some indelible images. I definitely checked to see when it would end less than a minute before it actually ended. But I can't argue with the potency of the film, which is really extraordinary. Whew. ok. Next.