Teorema (1968) is an intentionally "difficult" film that will not appeal to very many viewers, but for some it will be profoundly rewarding. It is basically a dramatization of abstract concepts. Its creator, Pier Paolo Pasolini, was one of the most provocative filmmakers so far and one of the most important and radical intellectual voices of the twentieth century. He was a moviemaker, novelist, poet, Catholic turned atheist, homosexual, Communist, social critic, and victim of a brutal murder, all wrapped up in one.

Historical Background: Pier Paolo Pasolini was born in 1922 in Bologna, the most left-wing of Italian cities. He was the son of a career soldier with Fascist inclinations and a schoolteacher mother with a love for poetry. Pasolini identified with his mother and maintained a close relationship to her throughout his life. The family moved from town to town in northern Italy as his father was transferred from one garrison to another. Though known internationally mostly for his films, Pasolini was much more than that in his native country. While still a boy, Pasolini began writing poetry in Friulian, the dialect of his mother's native Casarsa region, northeastern of Venice. In 1937, the family returned to Bologna, where Pasolini began study of literature and art history at the University of Bologna and published poems and articles in the student political and literary magazine. He published his first book of poems at his own expense in 1942.

In 1943, Pasolini was drafted into the Italian army. When Italy surrendered in response to the Allied invasion of the mainland, Pasolini's unit was captured by the Germans. Pasolini escaped and laid low in Casarsa until the end of the war. Pasolini's only brother was killed during the war. His father was captured in Kenya, was a prisoner of war for a while, and, later, became alcoholic, drinking himself to death in 1958. After the war, Pasolini became a schoolteacher and joined the Italian Communist Party in 1946, becoming the secretary of the local branch. He was also active in literary groups. In 1949, Pasolini, who was homosexual, was accused of sexual activities with students. He was suspended from his teaching position and expelled from the Communist Party.

As a result, Pasolini and his mother moved to Rome in 1950, finding refuge in the borgate, which consisted of slums on the margin of the city. There, Pasolini worked as a teacher in the shanty-towns, while also involving himself in the world of pimps, prostitutes, and petty thieves. Pasolini himself was arrested more than once, sometimes for simply being in the wrong company but once after attempting to rob a gas station. Pasolini drew on this experience with the seedy and criminal culture of the borgate for his first novel, Ragazzi di vita (1955). After the book's publication, Pasolini was charged with offenses to public decency, the first of many such prosecutions for his work. A second book about the borgate, Una Vita Vilenta ("A Violent Life"), was published in 1959. Pasolini also published another volume of poems in 1957, earning the Viareggio Prize, and edited an avant-garde magazine, until it was shut down after a poem criticized Pope Pius XII as he lay dying.

Pasolini's first cinematic effort was a screenplay for a film directed by Mario Saldati called La Donna del Fiume. In his first film as a director, Accattone! (1960), Pasolini returned to the theme of the borgate that he had explored in his first two novels. The film's release caused a great scandal, first, because it treated the amoral characters of the borgate sympathetically and, second, because it introduced what would become a hallmark characteristic of Pasolini films – the "contamination" of the sacred with the profane. The main character, Accattone (which means "pimp"), is presented as a kind of inverse Christ figure, ultimately dying between two thieves, one of whom makes the Catholic cross sign in reverse over Accattone as he dies. There's also a scene in which a street brawl transpire to the strains of Bach's St. Matthew's Passion. Coppola later used similar juxtapositions in The Godfather, but it was radical for the Italy of the early sixties. Pasolini completed his so-called borgate period with Mamma Roma (1962), with Anna Magnani as a prostitute, and La ricotta, which was his episode in a team effort with Rossellini, Godard, and Gregoretti. Both of these films further developed Pasolini's contamination tactic, resulting in more scandal and censorship.

In 1964, Pasolini made two films that seemingly defied any effort to categorize his work. First, he produced a documentary, called Comizi d'amore ("Love Meetings"), consisting of interviews throughout Italy, in all age groups and social classes, relating to sexual habits and attitudes toward homosexuality, divorce, and abortion. Alberto Moravia (a writer and friend of Pasolini) and Cesare Musatti (a psychoanalyst) were then asked to comment on the various interviews and what it indicated about Italy as a whole. Then, later in the same year, Pasolini positively amazed his critics and gained international attention with a brilliant and basically solemn retelling of the story of Christ, based on the Gospel according to St. Matthew, which was also the title of the film. Despite something of a Marxist spin on the story, depicting Jesus as a social revolutionary, the work was praised by several Catholic organizations, including the Office Catholique International du Cinéma. Communists, on the other hand, denounced the film for an excess of piety. Pasolini, in seems, couldn't win!

Next came Pasolini's Totò period (1966-67), during which he produced one feature film and two shorts featuring a veteran Italian comic actor, named "Totò." Later, Pasolini addressed himself to two mythic pieces, Oedipus Rex (1967) (see lynnbryant's Review), using it as a vehicle to explore his own Oedipal conflict, and, later, Medea (1970). Between the two came Pasolini's so-called "difficult" period, triggered by his increasing disgust for neocapitalist consumerism, during which time he intentionally set out to make films that would be comprehensible only for "culturally elite" viewers and "unconsumable" by the masses. The films of this period were Teorema (1968) and Porcile (1969). Pasolini then made a conscious decision to move away from films based on ideology. The result was three literary adaptations, called the "Trilogy of Life," based on medieval tales, featuring joie de vie and erotic sexuality. With these three films, Il Decamerone (1971) (see Wokelstein's Review), The Cantebury Tales (1973) (see Wokelstein's Review), and Arabian Nights (1974) (see Wokelstein's Review), Pasolini gained a following beyond the usual art-film aficionados. Pasolini had convinced himself that in eroticism, he had found the one arena of human activity that had not been corrupted by capitalistic consumerism, but he soon learned that it was not so, as a flood of pornographic imitations of his films proved that any and all human endeavors are corruptible by consumerism. As a result, Pasolini publicly renounced the Trilogy of Life films and directed, as an antithesis, his final film, Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975). Pasolini was brutally murdered by a young male prostitute shortly after this film's initial release. The film is about sadism in a Fascist context and was immediately banned throughout much of the world.

The Story: A charismatic young man (Terence Stamp) is an unexpected Visitor at the home of a bourgeoisie family in Italy. Each of the members of this family is drawn irresistibly to this young man, each ultimately making love with him, including, first, the servant, Emilia (Laura Betti), then the son, Pietro (Andrés José Cruz Soublette), followed by the mother, Lucia (Silvana Mangano), the daughter, Odetta (Anne Wiazemsky), and, finally, the father, Paolo (Massimo Girotti). As a result, each member of the family, individually, experiences a kind of spiritual awakening or epiphany. A note then arrives via a Messenger (Ninetto Davoli), indicating that the Visitor must leave the next day.

In the morning, a car comes for the Visitor. Emilia also packs a suitcase and leaves at the same time, trudging off to a train station after the Visitor departs in the car. Each of the family members now tries to cope with the existential void created by the Visitor's departure. Odetta experiences perceptual distortions, goes to the gate as if looking for the Visitor, has a momentary lightness of being (skipping playfully), looks at pictures she had taken of the Visitor in a lawn chair, goes to her room, lies down, clenches her fist, and goes into a catatonic stupor. She has to be hauled off on a stretcher to the nuthouse.

Pietro attempts to express the epiphany he experienced in his art. He starts with an ordinary line drawing but his perceptional sensitivity has grown more fluid. He smudges the piece, makes it more abstract, the figure now merging with the background and canvas. He sizes it up, seems momentarily moved and impressed with his work, then breaks into a hearty laugh, exclaiming, "Oh, what a waste. I'm full of crap!"

At the train station, Emilia sits motionlessly and draws the attention of an elderly woman. Emilia refuses to eat. She visualizes a pair of children (possibly an image out of her past), children in desperate poverty, surviving on boiled nettles. Emilia points to the nettles growing on a nearby wall. She will eat only those. Later, Emilia levitates in midair, above the station's roof and a boy rings the station bell, apparently to signal the miracle. Still later, Emilia walks off with the old woman, lies down in a hole and is covered with dirt, save for her eyes and mouth. "Don't fear," she says to the woman, "I haven't come here to die, but to weep. Not the tears of sorrow. No, they will be a fountainhead of renewal, not of sorrow. Go, go away, now, go!" As the old woman walks off, we see her silhouetted against the primordial glow of a sunset.

Lucia drives around looking for the Visitor. She spots various young men who vaguely resemble the Visitor and she picks one up. They go to his apartment for sex. Her eyes scan the objects in the apartment as he lies on top of her. Later, post-coitus, she slips away as the young man sleeps. She drinks in the cityscape as she walks out. In her car, behind the wheel, she screams in agony. She picks up another pair of young men, later having sex with one of them on the ground in a dirt pit beside an old rundown mansion. She sees a religious statue with outstretched arms. Later, spying an old abandoned church, she parks, runs inside, and closes the door, which leaves her in the dark.

Paolo, driving to a metro station, wonders what would happen if he decided to turn his factory over to the workers. Earlier, in an introductory, pre-credit sequence, we saw him do just that, then answering a series of shallow questions from reporters about why. At the station, he spies a young man that reminds him of the Visitor. The camera seems especially focused on the young man's crotch and tight jeans. Paolo greets a child playfully. After the child leaves, Paolo, standing in the middle of this highly public station, strips, piece by piece, then slowly walks off, completely naked. Later, we see him walking alone, still in the buff, through some kind of existential desert, kicking up the sand. He falls, gets up, and, like his wife, screams in despair.

Themes: Pasolini intentionally made this film difficult. It's obvious that he succeeded, since the comments and reviews on the internet for this film indicate that most viewers have no idea what the film is about. Ebert opined that few moviegoers will like this film. I agree, but that doesn't mean it is not a good film – or even a great one. In my opinion, there are four main themes engaged by Pasolini in Teorema. The most central one can be expressed in a variety of ways, but I would characterize it as the illusion of self and the psychological crisis that is likely to result from having that illusion exposed. Most people will go through their lives without ever truly understanding that their sense of self is an illusion – an artifact of how the brain functions. It is an artifact but one that is prerequisite to the survival impulse. The nature of evolution is such (i.e., survival of the fittest) that only organisms possessed of a strong survival impulse can compete successfully. The illusion of self creates the will to survive with provides the competitive advantage necessary to survive. The brain creates the illusion of self through perceptual subjectivity. Every incoming sensory stimulus is prioritized based on its importance to survival of that organism and only the subset of stimuli most relevant to survival reaches perceptual representation in consciousness. Subjectivity and the resultant sense of self are crucial for functional effectiveness. That necessity, however, in no ways changes that fact that sense of self is illusory.

Who or what is the Visitor, in Teorema? Some reviewers interpret the Visitor as God or the devil or Christ or religion in general. In my opinion, the Visitor is closer to the concept of Dante's Beatrice. The Visitor is an experience of oneness with the universe. Such experiences can occur by more than one agency, but the usual causes are (1) mystical experiences, (2) other states of religious grace or exaltation, (3) meditation techniques, or (4) use of psychedelic drugs, such as LSD or mescaline. Near the beginning of the film, Pasolini uses a quote from Exodus to signal the passage from normal perception to a state of altered consciousness – cosmic consciousness: "God led the people about, through the way of the wilderness." After his mystical experience, Pietro says, "I don't recognize myself." His self has merged with the cosmos; self and not-self can no longer be differentiated. "Knowing that I'm about to lose you [his momentary experience of cosmic consciousness] makes me conscious of my otherness. What is to become of me from now on? The future will be like living with a self that has nothing to do with me." Having once seen the truth behind the illusion of self, Pietro is uncertain he can ever go back to living within the illusion, but a person cannot function for his own survival in a continuous state of cosmic consciousness. One state is an illusion required to function effectively for survival; the other is real but dysfunctional. "Perhaps I should thoroughly explore that otherness you've revealed to me and which now is my innermost troubled self," says Pietro.

Each person's experience with oneness events is unique. For Lucia, it was the discovery of a fundamental emptiness in her life and lack of real vital interest. "I realize now that I've never had any real interest in anything." "I have nothing. I don't know how I managed to live in such emptiness." "That emptiness was filled with false and petty values and a dreadful heap of wrong ideas." "You have given me love that has made my life full. By leaving me, you destroy it all." Lucia has seen the emptiness of a self-centered existence after learning that self does not truly exist. How could she ever go back to complacently living what she now knows to be a life of lies?

Odetta's crisis is the most severe. She says, "I wasn't aware of my sickness before, but now I am." The "sickness" is her existential separation from the universal. "You have made me find the right solution to my life." "But now you're leaving me, you're making me fall back even further. . . The pain of losing you will cause a relapse much more dangerous than the sickness." In clenching her fist, Odetta is choosing permanent cosmic consciousness, surrendering her identity as an individual. She chooses to lapse into permanent psychosis, just as happens to a small percentage of psychedelic users (about one per 2000). Her self no longer exists.

Paolo is in distress as well. "You utterly destroyed the image I've always had of myself. Now I am unable to conceive of anything that could make me regain my identity." Emilia is less verbal than the members of the family for whom she works, but is first to recognize the "solution" to conflict between cosmic consciousness and subjective consciousness, once you've experienced both. As she and the Visitor depart concurrently, he offers to carry her bag, tantamount to an offer of continuous cosmic consciousness. Emilia, recognizing that one cannot function without the advantage of self-identity, replies, "No, I'll carry it." The Visitor then says, "Let's carry it together, okay?" How does a priest or a philosopher, a bohemian poet or an artist, who has once experienced grace or enlightenment, or whatever else he or she might call it, then continue to carry out activities of daily living that perpetuate the biological self, yet remain true to their cosmic awareness? The two levels of consciousness must carry on together. The person goes about his or her daily activities playing along with the illusion of self while keeping in the back of the mind that there is truly only one universal totality to which each self-apparition actually belongs.

As discussed in the "Background" section above, Pasolini had a penchant for "contamination" of the sacred and the profane. Some believe it to be no more than a propensity to provoke the authorities intentionally. Whatever his motivation, Pasolini at least restricts himself to fundamentally credible parallels. In Teorema, Pasolini illustrates the parallels between sex and religion, much to the chagrin of Italian authorities. What sex and religion share in common is that they are two mechanisms for dealing with the pain of existential loneliness. The illusion of self creates an existential void for many people – a sense of unnatural separateness from the universe. When one then recognizes the transience of self (i.e., the inevitability of death), the crisis typically grows all the more urgent. We seek relief from that sense of existential isolation through more direct contact with not-self. One tactic for achieving such contact is emotional and/or sexual intimacy. Sex can't unite a person with the entire rest of the cosmos, but it at least couples the self up with another piece of the cosmos (another person) in similar isolation. Religion or, better, experiences with cosmic consciousness of one kind or another also reduce the sense of individual separateness. The Visitor had sex with each of the members of the bourgeoisie family, but we can understand that as allegorical for each person mentally fornicating with the cosmos. Since cosmic experiences are independent of both gender and age, the Visitor is represented as pansexual or omni-sexual. This was part of the thinking in 1968, brought on by the sexual revolution, that Pasolini embraced. Pasolini uses a Biblical passage (from Jeremiah) to show how religion is inherently sexual in nature: "O Lord, you have lured me and I let myself be loved. You have ravished me and you have prevailed. I am the object of scorn every day."

A third thematic issue in Teorema relates to artistic expression of ineffable experiences of cosmic consciousness, whether mystical or psychedelic in origin. There's a whole body of works, for example, referred to as psychedelic art, through which artists struggle to express what they experienced during a state of cosmic exultation brought on by drugs. It is mainly through Pietro, who is an artist, that Pasolini explores this particular theme. Pietro tries to form a bridge between his momentary experience of cosmic consciousness and ordinary subjective consciousness. "I must try to devise new techniques that would be unrecognizable, unlike anything that has been done before," he says. "Everything must seem to be perfect, based on rules that are unknown, hence, not subject to criticism. Like a madman, yes, like a madmen." It has often been asserted that madmen are closer to God. Or, closer to cosmic consciousness, which, as noted previously, is reality but dysfunctional as a mental state for daily living. "A line drawn on glass can be straightened out," Pietro continues, "without messing up a line previously drawn on another glass." What Pietro thereby realizes is that the conflict between cosmic consciousness and subjective consciousness can be resolved by superimposing one on top of the other. Carrying the baggage of thought processes together! One can function within the illusion of self, while, simultaneously, keeping in the back of one's mind that it is only an illusion. No artistic expression of cosmic consciousness can ever be fully adequate for the same reason that such experiences are ineffable. Anything expressed about "all-ness" is partly incorrect because in saying or depicting anything whatsoever about it, one excludes the opposite, which cannot possibly be absent from EVERYTHING. Pietro says as much when he comments, "Blue brings back his [the Visitor's] memory, but blue alone is obviously not enough. The blue is but a part. Who'd empower me so to mutilate?"

Finally, Pasolini, being the political animal that he was, extends the ideas illuminated in Teorema into political allegory. While I don't share Pasolini's belief in Communism as a satisfactory solution to the core political problems that exist in human society, I do share some of his concern over capitalism and consumerism as contributors to the crisis in the human condition. The notions of possessiveness and private ownership on which capitalism is built and of which consumerism is the apotheosis rest on the illusion of self. By contrast, philosophies like humanism follow from awareness of the universality of us all. Communism is more in accord with cosmic consciousness than is capitalism, which also means that Communism runs contrary to humans functioning as selfish individuals limited to subjective consciousness – which is all one can realistically expect from the vast majority of people. So, while Communism sounds transcendent in theory, it fails in practice, for the same reason that people cannot function is a state of continuous grace. Nevertheless, in Pasolini's view, it is Emilia, the woman of the proletariat, whom he expressly associates with renewal and recovery.

Production Values: Teorema is a low-budget film and it sometimes shows. Compared to the New Wave directors (who were contemporaries), Pasolini is less concerned with the filmmaking process and more concerned with the substance and ideas. Since that coincides with my own priorities, I'm prepared to overlook a bit of graininess and occasional poorly lit scenes. I hardly noticed because this film draws you into its ideas. Pasolini's use of symbolism and subtle visual inferences is exceptional. The sexual innuendo of the film, for example, is frequently carried through "crotch shots" and skin-tight jeans. Pasolini skillfully interjects a recurrent shot of sand blowing in the wind to suggest the eternal machinations of the universe. There's also a recurrent use of closed doors to suggest the existential rift between the universal ether and individual subjective consciousness.

Pasolini has incorporated a variety of music into the film. First, there are excerpts from Mozart's Requiem to underscore the cosmic nature of the subject matter. Second, there's some music composed expressly for the film by Ennio Morricone that has an ethereal kind of sound to it. Finally, near the end, there's a jazzy theme. I thought each of the components of the score well-suited to the corresponding scenes.

Terence Stamp had the unenviable task of playing the Cosmos, in effect, while also having to be sexy without being uncouth. He has an extensive resume of film appearances that include Far from the Maddening Crown (1967), The Hit (1984), Wall Street (1987), The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994), The Limey (1999), Red Planet (2000), and The Haunted Mansion (2003). Laura Betti, who played the servant Emilia, won a best actress award for this film from the Venice Film Festival. She later appeared in 1900 (1976). Silvana Mangano, who played the mother, also appeared in Death in Venice (1971) and Dark Eyes (1987). I liked Anne Wiazemsky, as Odetta. She is otherwise best known for an appearance in Au Hasard, Balthazar (1966). Andrés José Cruz Soublette did a super job as the son, Pietro. Massimo Girotti, who plays Paolo, the father, also appeared in Ossessione (1942) and Last Tango in Paris (1972).

Bottom-Line: The wildly divergent responses to Teorema became evident as soon as it was released. The International Catholic Jury awarded the film its grand award, only to relent later under pressure from the Vatican, which condemned the award officially. The Italian courts then put both Pasolini and the producer on trial for obscenity (but they beat the rap). Teorema is a great film, in my opinion, but many viewers will not understand it or enjoy it. When viewers don't comprehend a film, the terms that typically crop up are "pretentious" or "opaque."

I highly recommend this film, but only for lovers of "deep" art films and/or philosophical queries into existential themes. Teorema is in Italian with English subtitles, a few of which are difficult to read. The running time is 93 minutes.


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You might want to check out these other excellent films from Italy:

Amarcord
L’Avventura
The Bicycle Thief
Christ Stopped at Eboli
Cinema Paradiso
The Conformist
Death in Venice
Divorce Italian Style
The Dreamers
Eclipse
8 ½
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis
General della Rovere
The Last Emperor
The Leopard
Life is Beautiful
Malèna
Mamma Roma
Miracle in Milan
The Night of the Shooting Stars
Nights of Cabiria
La Notte
Padre Padrone
Il Postino
Rocco and His Brothers
Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom
Shoeshine
The Son’s Room
The Spider's Stratagem
Star Maker
Swept Away
The Tree of Wooden Clogs
Umberto D.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: VHS
Video Occasion: Good for a Rainy Day
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age