Pasolini's "Mother of Rome"

Franco 2022-09-03 00:40:44

When Fasbender used a title "He is a legend" before, he felt that his experience and career completely matched these four words. Thinking about it now, Pasolini, another legendary figure in film history, should not be happy. Willing to believe that the extracurricular life of these two directors is very exciting, there is no doubt, but these have nothing to do with their work, or you can say that everything other than the film has nothing to do with the film itself - we do not need to consider the author factor to impose In any form of expressive art, especially when it's done, it's obviously already independent, individual, and responsible for itself.

It was almost 1:30 a.m. when I watched "Mama Roma". Recently, I like to watch discs at midnight. The advantage of this is that it gives me an additional identification method: whether watching this movie makes me faint drowsy. The list I have to mention here that they didn't pass is Who Killed Poppy, City of Sadness, Love Me, Don't Go, Hammett, The 601st Call. Obviously I was pretty disappointed with City of Sadness, and it's not clear why I yawned even when I rewatched it the next day. I doubt whether such a standard is accurate, but I believe that every moviegoer has the right to choose some methods to make the "decision" easier.

And "Mama Roman"?

After I already knew that the director was Pasolini, I was very cautious about this film, afraid that it would be another film based on the shocking ethics. Fortunately, with the deepening of the film, it did not show a trace of abnormality. Could it be that Pasolini will prepare to bring us a warm and artistic film.
The first 30 minutes of the film actually made me drowsy, and the black and white footage kept "playing out" my mother's character: her loud voice, her laughter, her expanding movements. This is of course a narrative need, but the incoherent jumping shots make me unable to sink in, and if the actor is a little bit deliberate, it will appear very deliberate, so the importance of an actor to a film is reflected here. I didn't know this actress very well at first, but I checked the information and found that it was the heroine of Fellini's "Roma", which surprised me because I personally didn't think she played very well in this film.

After watching too many movies about mothers or family relationships, basically, when the movie is in the middle, you can probably guess the direction of the whole story. When the scene starts with the mother finding her son in the countryside, I'm guessing that Papa won't turn her into a prostitute, right? It was later confirmed that she was indeed a prostitute. In my personal taste, the story is not allowed to be so cliché. This kind of cliché is also reflected in the following pimp asking for money from the mother, I believe for sure, the mother will compromise with the pimp in order to be afraid that the son will know his identity, but in the end the son will definitely know, and then start to alienate the mother... all of this The plot seems to be just a third-rate Hollywood script. I don't know why it appeared under such a movie lens that is respected as a master. Until the end, I thought the story would not end like this, and the follow-up would be different, but until the end I didn't wait for the end. If so, I would prefer to like his stories like "120 Days of Sodom", at least the explosion is handled with strength but calm.

So whether this film is not desirable, I don't think it is. When faced with such a bad script, the average director has lost his ability to recover, and even worse, the people who watch it are sleepy (this reminds me of some of the films mentioned earlier). We look at how Pasolini did it? After seeing his son hanging out with punks all day, even with a woman with a child, Pasolini asked his mother to find a former prostitute girlfriend and then seduce her son. I didn't know until I watched the movie. Whether she really seduced her son was only mentioned later when the mother chatted with the prostitute, who said he liked her very much. But it is also difficult for us to prove whether they have had a relationship. Such an example is the same as a son and a woman with a child. What did they do when they walked to the room at the end of the path together? The film doesn't even give our leading man a kiss scene. The Pasolini here is worth pondering, and I don't think the director is avoiding anything - a good director shouldn't avoid any desired plot in the first place, but come when he should. I felt the same way when I recently wrote a black and blue essay, because the title was about the first time I felt that there must be a sexual description, and even pornography could not be rejected, so I ducked and pretended to be contrived - he just felt that it was unnecessary, even for kissing. Be careful about this little detail, and you can't create anything for the role of mother. Therefore, the prostitutes, including the women with children, only play the role of props. It is better to say that they are Pasolini's puppets, and all the puppets serve the protagonist. And when my mother left the street, she babbled, and the passers-by next to her kept changing. This is probably the longest scene in the film. The director followed the filming for a long time, and passers-by exchanged and escorted her mother one after another. It was a harbinger of her life. It was her past experience that brought her to the present. She walked out of here and went to a new life. , but there is no doubt that Pasolini behind him was not so kind.

Another place is the fight between my son and a friend, which I liked a lot too. There will be a fight scene that is essential for the story to develop here, especially in a movie that describes the life of a teenager. The son had a fight with a friend, and the reason could be any one, for money, for cigarettes, for face and for women. Of course, most of them should be for women. That's right, my son fought with one of the gangsters for the sake of women. At that time, he should be in love with a woman with children (everyone knows that he gave her a gold chain), But the friend wanted to let the woman go with them, and the son was angry. At this time, all the teenagers will be angry and full of energy. So her son was beaten badly, but the woman took the initiative to leave with the gangsters. She had no response to her son lying on the ground. Although she was begging them to stop fighting the moment before, once she won or lost by one point, she would Let go of the weak. Here, Pasolini's political theme has obviously begun to manifest in the early days, including in the later "120 Days of Sodom", he has been emphasizing: this is a world of the weak.

I have seen the information that "Mother of Rome" is Pasolini's early work, I don't know how early, but it is obvious that this kind of gentle and normal story has been completely invisible in his later career. "Mother of Rome" is an ordinary story, and Pasolini did not use too technical processing, rough and concise, but the black and white impression does have that indescribable charm to attract, "grocery market, football field, broken grass, motorcycle Although there is not much writing in scenes such as "Car, Hospital", they are very vivid.
Pasolini's films have always liked to use a jumping rhythm. The plot is sometimes hidden and requires characters to speak and hint, but strangely it still maintains the continuity of the story, which is not obscure compared to Fellini, who is his friend. . The film ends with the son dying in the hospital and the mother crying and yelling in the direction of the son. I couldn't help but quickly turned off the TV and started writing this blog. If I really want to sum up this movie at the end, I can only say that this is a technically mediocre story, but still has a brilliant movie.

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Extended Reading

Mamma Roma quotes

  • Mamma Roma: There was a neighbor of ours, a rich old man with loads of money. He dressed like Robespierre. He had a mustache and cane, like he was a king. You know how he made his money? Under fascism. Mussolini told him, "Build a district for the working class."

  • Mamma Roma: He was 65 and I was 14. I got married in a young fascist girl's uniform!

    [laughs]