Memorable, crazy movie

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

There are at least hundreds of reasons why I like Il Decameron so unbelievably much, a film that, in retrospect, always feels like a whole night of various kinds of wonderful dreams. First of all, there is this incredible variety of faces and characters in those stories and episodes that are both, alternating comic and tragic. I especially love the episodes with the three brothers and their poor sister, the one with two "nightingales" on the roof top, the side plot with Franco Citti and, of course, the self-ironic part which Pasolini plays himself. I also like the two big long shots à la Bosch and Giotto (with my woman Silvana Mangano as Madonna in the latter). I like the film's rich choral fresco, the joyful and sensual atmosphere which surrounds the often bitter fate of the characters, the transformation of literary and cinematic material to an impudently carnal and physical matter, which consists of erections, stomachaches, hunger, excrements. I like how the film laughs about life and sexuality and frequently meets death.There's always a constant, circuiting movement where all characters are driven by the desire to improve their living conditions and to fulfill their wishes. While doing so, they come to know betrayal and disappointment and therefore reckon with the reality of a world that is mean and unfair to them. There are the rich and the poor (such as Lisabetta and her brothers and Lorenzo), the smart and the naive, the saints and the sinners, the self-pleasing and the troublemaker. Those crowd scenes that often connect the episodes of all these swarming people and colours, where always a special incidence of light, a striking gesture of a figure, an effective angle catches the eye, are especially beautiful. And finally there's the cut with these smooth counterparts of environment and human figure, of static takes and wild tracking shots (i.e. the wonderful chase in the woods of Lorenzo and the three brothers with its sudden standstill, the transition of the lightness of the play to an ominous shadow). And the shots of Ninetto silently dancing himself outside the church or Lisabetta hugging the plant pot with tears running down her cheek are the ones I will never forget.

The tragedy is that this piece of rubbish was part of my curriculum while I was studying cinema. So imagine how I was forced to watch it in complete. Believe me going through hell is much much easier. Our professor told us that this is some film ???, but he never thought that we'd disagree or assume the apposite. I don't think that there is any gods on earth, we're only humans, so all the filmmakers, therefore they CAN make mistakes, bad movies.. Or very bad too. The main problem wasn't that art, by all means, is susceptible to endless points of view, but that a lot of people just don't get it, that every single human got his own genuine taste, his own opinion, hence what I suppose it the greatest movie ever made, can also be your worst one ever, and how that is right both ways, but how many people can understand this correctly?. So my professor believes in this movie, and simply I don't. However, the only way to evaluate this "thing" is by measuring it by its original intent to show us different kinds of old folk stories or whatever to catch on this society's mentality, imagination, and nature. To tell you the truth, Mr. Pier Paolo Pasolini as the scriptwriter and the director made it too unbearable to watch in the first place. The movie is so UGLY. I can't stand this, so how about analyzing it, then discovering the potential beauty in it !! It's beyond your mind hideousness, and strangely not for the sake of the movie's case or anything, it's for the sake of the unstable vision of Pasolini. His work is so primitive to underdeveloped extent. The deadly cinematic technique, the effective sense of silliness, and the incredible horribleness made everything obnoxious. Look at the atrocious acting, the unfruitful cinematography, the awfully poor sets, .. OH MY GOD I've got the nausea already. It can terminate your objectivity violently as watching this movie is one true pain like taking the wisdom tooth off by a blind doctor. There are dreadful nightmares which could be more merciful than this. So originally, how to continue THAT just to review it fairly ? Actually, you don't. As this very movie doesn't treat you fair at all. There is really memorable scene in here where some boys are peeing into the eye of the camera (!) I'm trying to connect some things like that with Pasolini's end as murdered.

"But i wonder. Why create a work of art when dreaming about it is so much sweeter?" Pier Paolo Pasolini in his "Decameron" Pasolini's "Il Decameron" is based in the stories that told us Boccaccio in his book with the same name. This short stories are of passion, loves, luster, deceits, sex and sins. But is too the artist internal conflict.The wonderful of this Pasolini's "Il Decameron" which begin Pasolini's "Trilogy of Life" that is compound by this one, "Racconti di Canterbury" (1971) and "Arabian Nights" (1974) is the impressive way to capture the nature (As going to be regular in the films of this trilogy). The story that told us here are very interesting, and without a doubt, each of one makes you think. Some are funny and sometimes shameless. Others are sad and full of feelings like love. The first story told us about the fool Adreuccio and how he becomes rich with a lot of s**t on him... since her, you going to watch and hear interesting stories that represents how the human been is sometimes.I never (No matter if they paid me a lot of cash for it) going to say that Pasolini and his work are scandalous. For me, this is true art. I think that Pasolini, in the character of the artist, want to tell to the world about the inspiration of an artist and at the same time, the passion of an artist. And, if you don't know it yet, Pasolini is one of the best and most important thinkers of the XX century. And he truly deserves that title. A real artist.Pasolini's "Decameron" is a very interesting work of art. And, at the same time, teach me think twice before when my wife (That i don't have yet) orders that enter in a big vase.*Sorry for the mistakes. Well, if there any.

Film lovers know "Andrei Rublov," that Russian film about an icon painter. The beauty of the film comes in part because the filmmaker is on the same quest as his character, and that quest has as its core the discovery of beauty. The interesting thing about movies is that they create and sustain a fantasy world that lives beyond any one movie and into which we assume each movie is born. That world has its own type of beauty, one born of color and glamor and poise.Paosolini does the same thing as Tarkovsky, but where Tarkovsky dealt with cosmic beauty and recognition, this artist has simpler goals: to engage with flesh, to flow with the simple streams of ignoble daily motion, and to discover beauty in that plain world.Oh, what a terrific cinematic place to visit! This is a far from that collection of movie metaphors and beauty as we can go. There is no movie acting here. There is no external beauty. There is no recourse to familiar characters or representation. As usual, he draws his source material from matter that is not only before cinema, but before any popular writing.And he works with that material outside any movie tricks. Well, he still has that Italian tendency to believe that the world is populated by characters and not situations or any sort of fateful flow. Just people who do things. Lots of little things, usually associated with pleasure.So if you are building a world of cinematic imagination you need to have this as one of your corners. That's silly, every one of us is building a cinematic imagination — we cannot avoid it. What I mean to say is that if you are building an imagination, some of which you understand and can use, some of which you actually want and can enjoy without being sucked into reflex...If you want to just relate to people as people and test how easy it is to find grace in the strangest of faces, then this is your movie voyage for the night.One rather shocking thing is how the nudity works. In "ordinary" film, we thing nothing of seeing two people humping and moaning, nude pelvises grinding is the most hungry of ways. But we gasp when some genital is shown. Here, the exact reverse is found: no shyness about the obvious existence of genitals, an erection even. A sleeping girl with her hand in her lover's crotch. DIsplayed as if it were in the same cinematic territory as the faces he finds.But when these characters lay on each other for sex, we have the most prurient of actor's postures. I think this was done simply to avoid an automatic sweep into ordinary film ways. It has that effect anyway.I don't know anyone that chooses more interesting faces. Distinctly Southern European, odd atypical faces.And finally, there is the bit of his own story inserted, the artist in the church. Creating scenarios of rich life. In the movie, the most amazing scenes are those that have little or nothing to do with the story. There's a "death" tableau that could be the richest single shot I have ever seen, anywhere.Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.