IMDb user comments for
Teorema (1968)
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Date: 31 May 2002
Summary: The collapse of the
bourgeosie
Pier Paolo Pasolini is one of the greatest artists of the 20th
Century. He is not generally recognized as such, but he ought to be and
hopefully will be someday. At least in the world of cinema, he should
have an equal position to any of the great masters.
Teorema is
just one reason why. It's not my personal favorite Pasolini film, but
it's easily one of the best films I've ever seen. Unlike my favorites,
Mamma Roma, The Decameron, and Arabian Nights, Teorema is a highly
abstract film imbued in symbolism. Not that there isn't symbolism in
those other films. The difference is that, in Teorema, the human element
is reduced. The characters in the film are symbolic members of a typical
bourgois family, the mother, father, son, and daughter (and maid). One
day a young man arrives at their home. Apparently they know him. They
received a letter that he would be there, and they didn't think twice
about it. This man (played by Terence Stamp) arrives during a party.
When a friend asks the daughter who that boy is, she replies: "Just a
boy."
Over the next few days, this "boy" seduces every member of
the family. He seems angelic, offering help selflessly whenever anyone
feels hurt or isolated or sick. He speaks little - indeed, there is
hardly any dialogue in the entire film - but is always there for the
needy. The film begins with a quotation from the Bible, meant to compare
the bourgeosie to the Jews wandering lost in the desert after they
escaped from Egypt. The mysterious boy, is he God?
Or,
conversely, is he a golden calf? Or is he the devil himself? I was
unsure of whether Stamp could play the character when I first read up on
the film (I had read the first bit of the novel, written concurrently
with the film by Pasolini, before I watched the film), but, as Teorema
progressed, I realized that he was perfect. Stamp has a face hanging
uniquely between evil and kind-hearted. His eyes are cherubic, but his
grin is diabolical. What, exactly, is this young man here to
do?
Well, I won't ruin it for you if you haven't seen it (plus, I
think I've gone on enough). Suffice it to say that the revelations and
effects that are brought out by the boy's presence are profound and
quite brilliant. Anyone interested in European art films of the era owes
it to themselves to see Teorema. If you are more into realism,
especially if you didn't like Teorema, move onto Mamma Roma, The Gospel
According to Matthew, and the Trilogy of Life (The Decameron, The
Canterbury Tales, and Arabian Nights).
Date: 27 March 2002
Summary: Over the top
histrionics
A neurotic bourgeois family and their weird maid are visited by a
divine Terrence Stamp who lounges around with his legs spread. Pasolini
gives us lots of crotch shots. Every member of this messed up brood fall
in love with Terrance. Then he leaves. Miracles happen. Funny miracles.
and brooding and moaning and groaning and hysteria from the family. The
maid levitates. I laughed.
Why does anyone take this
seriously?
Date: 15 February 2002
Summary: Sleep inducing and not
as deep as it thinks.
Pier Paolo Pasolinis "Teorema" put me to sleep after 20 minutes. I
woke up only minutes later to find that I've missed absolutely nothing
because nothing really happened. The first half of the movie is every
bit as boring, pretentious and dreadful as "Ta'm e guilass" (also known
as "Taste of Cherry") - and it doesn't improve much. Yes, Terence Stamp
is compelling as the visitor who stirs up the bourgeois family. Yes
there are some interesting thoughts about religion, marxism,
homosexuality and of course bourgeois boredom - but why not make this
into an interesting film? Many Buñuel films go in the same direction but
are leagues ahead of "Teorema" - "Cet obscur objet du désir" or the
brilliant "Belle du jour" come to mind.
Is "Teorema"
controversial? Perhaps if you're a stuck-up conservative. Otherwise,
there's not much controversy in this movie. After the stranger leaves,
the family falls apart and does all sorts of weird things - but they're
neither shocking nor thoughtful nor clever. A woman starts flying, a man
runs naked into a desert, a girl falls into a trance, a mother becomes a
prostitute. Big deal. Try Ozons witty "Sitcom" (1998) if you want to see
a family falling apart - or even Takashi Miikes sick "Visitor Q", but
stay away of "Teorema".
Well, Pasolini was a poet, so you might
ask whether there's some poetry (visually or dialogue-wise) in the
movie. Not much, I have to say. Visually, I liked the one shot of the
father in the desert, holding out his arms and shouting (I was prepared
to do that too if the film would have run for another minute). That shot
was neat, the rest didn't move me at all. To sum things up, "Teorema" is
as overrated as movies can be. I'd say it's as overrated as the oevre of
Theo Angelopoulos or the aforementioned "Taste of Cherry". Boring,
pretentious stuff of an egomaniac film maker. Yes, it might be deeply
personal - but so are someone's photos from his/her last trip to
Greece.
Rating: 3/10
Date: 26 October 2001
Summary: Perhaps one of the five
greatest films ever produced. Have seen it 5 or 6 times in the last few
decades, always with amazement and fresh appreciation.
Pasolini was a genius filmmaker and Teorema, in my opinion, is his
finest hour. Movie reviewers and aficionados are still discussing what
the film attempts to communicate. It almost matters not! Terence Stamp
is riveting. The plot continues to be ambiguously fascinating. I pray
Teorema will appear again on a large screen, clear projection, so that I
may see it at least once more before I die. Need I say
more?
Date: 29 April 2000
Summary: Pasolini as a Sufi
Master
Teorema is an idea a concept a piece of something. Into this movie,
based on Pasolini's novel with the same title, the author explains is
own view about a class of people. During the 60's italy hand a very
"easy life" period. The middle class was the principal image of good
values. Pasolini took one example of middle-industrial class in Milan
and shows the contradictions of a family obliged to hide everything
thati is versus the common sense, that is the moral sense im this case.
A guest arrive from nowhere. In spite of the others he is silent. One by
one the people in the house change attitudes. The first pat of the movie
shows the relation between the guest and the others. The others are
unable to listen and the guest, with a non-dialogue shock every belive
of the others. The attitude of the guest is similar to tho one of Sufi
method where is not neccessary to talk to the one that needs you but the
one that needs you will come to you because he or her wants
to.
Date: 27 April 2000
Summary: Unmasking the unbearable
emptiness of bourgeois life...
...or so this film would have you think. Is capitalism really a
dreamworld, our rôles and possessions merely shabby window dressing? What
happened when it is all swept away?
Like the inhabitants of
Plato's cave, a well-to-do Italian family is shown that the lives they
lead are inauthentic and shallow. But where to turn when you find out
that the life you led has been a fraud? Religion? Sex? Art?
All
compelling questions, even moreso now, thirty plus years on from when
this film was made. Capitalism has managed to adapt to every criticism
and become more subtle, its spectacles enveloping us in a cradle to
grave ocean of images and brands, all of which can give meaning and
backfill those empty spaces, and all at a reasonable price. Thus, it is
compelling to consider what might happen to someone who has this
value-giving process shattered.
Alas, compelling philosophical
questions do not a good film make. Besides its mighty technical
limitations (including bad camera work, terrible editing and lousy
blocking) Teorema doesn't deliver.
The characters are (with the
exception of Stamp) absences rather than presences. That their lives are
torn apart doesn't really matter to us because these people never meant
anything to us anyways. Perhaps the aim was to present them as everyfolk, to say, "this could be you", but from such generalities there
is little for us to hang our emotions on.
Stamp is the catalyst
for all of these changes, and although we have as little impression of
his character, his stare and his seductive energy set him apart. Alone
amongst the characters (until he awakens them) he acts upon the world.
He is the best thing about this often dull movie, transforming the
family members in a manner that is sexy yet not explicit (one of the few
things the movie pulls off).
Grainy colour. Italian w/ English
subtitles. Rating: 3 out of 10. (flawed)
Date: 22 January 1999
Summary: Pasolini´s most
disturbing
Teorema is one of the most disturbing films ever.
I don´t think
the members of the family really fall in love with Terence Stamp (their
guest), but feel inexorably attracted to him, with a very strong sexual
component in this attraction.
All of them after the super event
of having sex with the guest find sex with this young man the most
meaningful thing in their lives, they feel happy with his presence at
home, he´s very handsome and adorable, he becomes their common
obsession.
I don´t really know to which extent each of them are
aware of sharing the guest with the others, and even if this awareness
would matter to any of them at all.
So after his sudden departure
they all feel absolutely empty inside, and do desperate things, since
they´ve found their lives are senseless without that new sexual element
such as the one Terence Stamp represents.
I identified
immediately, I am a family-member type of person, there might be some
guest type around. Terence Stamp character is such an enigma, you cannot
possess him, he is independent and is sexually generous to anyone, I
think the idea of sex and something divine is mixed up here. I really
got convinced that keeping such a person with you in life is the most
important thing, that nothing else matters. I felt empty
too.
Date: 3 January 1999
Summary: Pasolini's Best
Based on Pasolini's own epic poem, TEOREMA is a masterpiece of a
tragic-comedy and his most powerful and best executed movie
ever.
Terence Stamp plays a guest (presumably foreign) at the
house of a wealthy upper-class family (in Milan, Italy), each of whom
fall in love with him, including the house maid. After the guest's
unexpected departure, all members of the family despairingly resort to
various ways to resolve their grief. In one scene, the maid, whom the
guest had previously saved from an attempted suicide (by having sex with
her), ends up levitating 30 feet above ground, in sight of her whole
town. Decked in early Gucci, Silvana Mangano plays the mother who, to
console herself for the loss of her lover, picks up hustlers to drive
down to some ditches in the outskirts of town.
From www.amazon.com
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