Word: pasolinis
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...Reading "Stripburek" gives the impression that the Iron Curtain resulted in a kind of comix Galapagos where the avant-garde, poetical and parable possibilities of comix evolved in unexploited splendor. Danijel Zezelj's "Petrified Tree" uses high-contrast, slashing brushwork to interpret a poem by Pier Paolo Pasolini. Lucie Markvartova's "Switch On-Off" builds a story out of all the buttons a finger must push throughout the day. Many pieces are like Wostok and Grabowski's fantastical "Daddy Where Are You," about a little girl who follows Daddy's beard through all manner of obstacles only to find...
Were this just a story of disillusionment, of a woman's dreams shattered by the harsh realities of post-WWII Italy, "Mamma Roma" would be just another neo-realist film. Part of Pasolini's genius lies in his inability to rest in any one school or style. He has too much to say to remain only in the neo-realist genre, the genre most suited to his Marxist leanings. The film often seems torn between its clear Marxist stance and its religious overtones, as its many artistic influences and ideas blend together to create an omnipresent tension. Pasolini creates...
...references to Dante, to Caravaggio (Pasolini once said that he wrote the script completely around the character of the real Ettore Garofolo, whom he saw one day carrying plates in a restaurant "just like a Caravaggio figure"), to Mantegna's "Cristo morto," to Vivaldi, whose religious music provides the backdrop for much of the film. This tension between Marxism and Catholicism, neorealism and symbolic references, is never overwhelming. It enhances each sequence, beautifying that which is most ugly, most tragic, or even most ordinary in a film determined to expose just these elements of Roman life...
...Pasolini's violent murder in a Roman slum immortalized the artist. One critic referred to him as "St. Pier Paolo: Homosexual and Martyr," and most considered his final film, the bizarre and disturbing "Salo," strangely prophetic. It represents the enigmatic end of a tumultuous artistic career and, as Pasolini's 1959 novel proclaimed in its title, A Violent Life. "Mamma Roma" is far more typical than his last film, of the mix of politics and poetry, of ideology and of sentiment, which characterizes most of Pasolini's work. Its magnificent cinematography and superb acting make it a pleasure...
...Mamma Roma" caps off a six week, 12-film Pasolini festival at the Brattle Theatre...