Review of Pigsty (1969) by Jacob T — 23 Oct 2008

Pasolini intercuts the stories of two wanderers, one fugitive cannibal in a pseudo-medieval wasteland, and one ennui-addicted bourgeois slacker in a chateau built by his ex-Nazi father's blood money.

Unfortunately, while the former often makes for beautiful and mysterious cinema, the latter makes for deliberate if not stupid philosophical obscuration. This second half of Porcile is an example of Pasolini at his most self-indulgent and least successful, carrying us through disproportionally long scenes of dialogue on the nature of inalienability and emotional phenomena (none of which, we come to learn, mean anything, even to the characters that speak of them).

It is only when the film reaches the simultaneous climax of both narratives that it carries any real force, but by that point, the payoff is too intellectually simple for the set-up. As a piece of political cinema its bookends are great, but the forgettable mess of babble in the middle ruins the lesson.