prekdahl Review of Teorema

Teorema (1968)

How Pasolini Explained the Movie

[7/10 · 1 June 2009]

After seeing this movie I was very confused until I read an interview with Pasolini from 1969. In it he said, "I leave it to the spectator…is the visitor God or is he the Devil? He is not Christ. The important thing is that he is sacred, a supernatural being. He is something from beyond." When asked if the members of the family were in some way improved by their encounter with the visitor, he said, "Only in the sense that a man in a crisis is always better than a man who does not have a problem with his conscience. However, the conclusion of the story is negative because the characters live the experience but are not capable of understanding and resolving it. This is the 'lesson' of the movie -- the bourgeoisie have lost the sense of the sacred, and so they cannot solve their own lives in a religious way. But the servant is a peasant, really a person from another era, a pre-industrial era. That is why she is the only one who recognizes the visitor as God, why she alone does not rebuke him when he must leave. When I say God," Pasolini quickly adds, "I do not mean a Catholic God. He could belong to any religion, a peasant religion. All religions are really peasant religions. That is why religion is in crisis today. We are passing from a peasant world to an industrial world. But a world does not die, so the peasant civilization lives within us, buried within us. It is buried, along with the sense of the sacred, within the factory owner and his family in 'Teorema.'" ... "The father almost does (learn from his truly religious experience). He takes off his clothes and, like Saint Francis, leaves all material things behind. When he reaches the desert, which represents the ascetic life he has been trying to gain, he is not capable of living a mystical experience, as Saint Francis was, because he is historically made in another manner. He arrives almost to the limit of being saved, but he doesn't make it. It's very important that the middle-class sees its own errors and suffers for them."

I would have to say that the movie is a failure, since I think it would be pretty much impossible for a viewer to grasp that interpretation after seeing the movie once, without exposure to Pasolini's thought. However, it has some beautiful and haunting passages, and the movie stays in your mind for a long time after you see it.