The Decameron by Pier Paolo Pasolini

Category: Non-English

I should have reviewed this earlier but I didn't and anyway. This is the first film in the Life trilogy by Pasolini. The Decameron is based on a novel by Giovanni Boccaccio originally titled Decamerone.

As with his work reviewed yesterday, this one encapsulates multiple narratives and many characters across several stories. The earlier ones are particularly longer than the Second half (the film is split into 2 sections). The stories that come in the second one are far bizarre and the narrative is boundless as it continues from one story to another without any notification of a story coming to an end.

Having watched the film literally in two separate halves, I thought I'd be unlucky but to be honest it helped a lot. It felt like almost two films within the same film, this is done thankfully to the pace in which the film movies, the almost 110 minutes don't seem so claustrophobic since the meta narrative is controlled very well by Pasolini. Unlike Arabian Nights, this one doesn't have a central story running parallel to others and hence this one is very experimental in comparison to what he tries to achieve with the following films in this trilogy. The camera work is particularly remarkable, he seems to be able to control the pace of the film and the camera at regular intervals, even slowing down at times to enforce and drive certain points home.

The dialogue is very entertaining, lots of puns and funnies used in here. The sex is present here as well and it's just his style so something we all have to accept. Still this film shines past that unlike yesterday's film.

The stories in the film vary from people fighting to survive, people getting duped, a young couples love blossoming into instant marriage and another couple falling in love and meeting a disastrous end. There's also the artist who is a dominant force in the 2nd half of the film.

I'll end this entry with the final statement in the film, made by the artist -

"Why execute a work when it's so beautiful to dream it?"

Recommendation level: 4.5/5 - Credit to an old friend for lending DVDs to me! Do watch it if you can.

Arabian Nights by Pier Paolo Pasolini

Category: Non-English

For today and tomorrow am going to review two films from Pier Paolo Pasolini's trilogy. Arabian Nights was pretty well received for its time (1974). While technically and structurually it's a very complex film using strong meta-narratives in his film, Pasolini can deliver a very strong impact probably only comparable to his work as a writer among other occupations.

I wasn't too happy with the amount of nude scenes present in the film, yeah random statement to make but I haven't come to applaud the aesthetic that needs to have nudity on screen for prolonged amounts of time. It's almost like getting your money's worth I guess? Whatever.

Anyway to the basic plot - Nur-e-Din falls in love with the slave girl Zumurrud whom he ends up losing and in the process spends the entire film, in search for her but also bumping into women who are only too glad to make love to him. In between all this there are stories from the lives of people who aren't even remotely linked to the main storyline. Here's where the film is absolutely brilliant, the story telling, the humour, the situations but most importantly the narrative is so compelling that you really get muddled up until you actually realize that these stories are building it up, they are the meta narrative which eventually complete an entire film.

Some of the stories include - a man dumping his wife on the marriage day for another beautiful lady to come across an acrimonious realization about the lady, there is also the man who survives a bandit run and finds his way to a beautiful lady who is protected by a Demon. It's a little long at 120 minutes, but the films pace is such that it doesn't really drop you out of it's central theme.

Recommendation level: 4/5 If it wasn't for the absurd amount of nudity which at times isn't even needed in the plot it would have been a 5/5! Still brilliant stuff, DVD courtesy an old friend/mentor.