Written by Grady Fiorio
Original Publishing Date: August 24th, 2022
Rating: Trilogy 3.5/5 Criterion Box Set 3.5/5
Life, love, sex, death, and fart jokes?
Pasolini, Pasolini, Pasolini. You can never have too much Pasolini. Once again, for a third time, I bring you not one but three films from the Italian auteur. Pasolini's Trilogy of life. The trilogy is comprised of The Decameron, The Canterbury Tales, and Arabian Nights, all anthology films that are adaptations of their ancient counterparts of the same name. While those of you who are bad with numbers may hate my previous few sentences, I promise it gets easier from here. Both the books and films are a collection of short stories revolving around similar themes and aesthetics, covering life, love, sex, death, and yes... even fart jokes. Probably more than you would think. As those who have been reading my site know by now, I've had quite a fascination with Pasolini's work as a filmmaker. I had often heard about this trilogy and always wanted to dive in, but with no streaming options available I had a hard time with the $80 price tag that came with the box set. After constantly stalking the amazon page for this collection, I finally was able to catch it during a Criterion 50% off sale. While this would be barely a blip on the radar for most I've always been fascinated by what many would call "weird shit". After finally finding the time to sit down and watch all three films I've decided the review the trilogy as a whole. Each film plays well off the other and my overall thoughts stayed roughly the same throughout. Even though each film is made up of multiple independent stories, Pasolini has done an excellent job making the trilogy feel like one cohesive piece that begins and ends, so I decided to discuss it as such. I'll also be reviewing the criterion box set, so you can see for yourself if you think it's worth the steep $80 asking price.
So what is The Trilogy of Life? At its heart, it's a window into the past. Taking us to the late 1300s and even all the way back to the 200s, the trilogy examines what people were like, how they lived, loved, and took in each moment during a time period stricken by violence and plague. It looks at the comedy of everyday life, as the films are filled with an aurora of happiness and delight. These people navigate the complexities of life by savoring the simplicities around them. As the films progress, you begin to realize, as cliche as it might sound, that people of the time weren't that different from us now. They ate good meals, cracked jokes, tried to best others, and were infatuated by love, but were also stupidly horny. That's probably something to address at the get-go. These films are horny. Really horny. However, what makes them feel unique is their relaxed approach to sexuality. It's not shameful or sinful, it was just a part of people's lives. It's not approached in an exploitative or pornographic way. It feels like real people being themselves, making plenty of bad decisions along the way. People weren't prudish and aghast because of the shocking, horrifying, awful fact that people do in fact have genitals, and they like to use them. For the people that this does offend I feel truly sorry every time you have to look down. Despite all the religious hysteria of the time, people didn't think of their bodies as purely sexual devices. It was nature, it was natural, it was life, and life is beautiful.
One of the many things that make this trilogy so unique and truly sets it apart from other anthologies is its presentation. While most anthological films will present each story with a title card and standard act structure, this trilogy completely forgoes that. Each story begins and ends on its own terms, not always adhering to a three-act structure or even indicating when one story starts and another begins. It's up to the audience to pick up on the change in characters and setting. While this is definitely a unique choice it is also most certainly a confusing one. Stories can abruptly end without having a direct conclusion to their narrative or punchline to their joke. It often left me wondering what was the larger message I was supposed to be taking away from the story. However, this oddity ends up speaking to the larger theme of the trilogy. These stories act as a moment in time, a capsule of what was and a reflection of what is today. The vignettes of our lives do not always begin and end in a clean structured manner with proper closure. Sometimes we never hear back from the person we spoke to or get to tell someone that last thing we meant to say. Sometimes life is funny, sometimes it's hard, and sometimes it's just confusing, and this trilogy aims to hit that square on the head. It paints a portrait of the lives of these past societies while also showing us that they weren't too different from us today. They may have talked a bit differently and had some weird traditions, but they still lived, loved, died, screwed, and laughed when somebody farted at an inopportune time. When people look back on us 100s if not 1000s of years from now we can only hope that they'll see us the same way too.
It's also important to mention that the translation of these films also does leave a bit to be desired. Similar to Pasolini's other film Salò, certain nuances and contextual information can get lost in translation. This is also probably why the films pacing and structure felt off. It's one thing when you're approaching a film from an art house standpoint, it becomes a whole other when you're doing it in a different language. While the bulk of the film is understandable, sometimes your imagination has to do a bit of puzzle solving and heavy lifting. In my dedication to embarrassing honesty, I did on occasion have to pause the movie and read the Wikipedia page to pick up on details I felt I was missing. While I wouldn't say it's necessary to enjoying the trilogy, it did help give me a deeper understanding of what Pasolini was trying to thematically explore.
The trilogy beings with The Decameron. Taking us to 1300s Europe, The Decameron is a solid, if disjointed approach to Pasolini's style of storytelling throughout the three films. Originally written by Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron initially was written to help soothe Europe as it was being ravaged by the bubonic plague. Containing stories of life and death, it helped people make sense and peace with their lives as the tidal wave of death consumed their homes. This made for an interesting parallel with today's world. After facing a rapidly changing societal landscape due to the coronavirus, many of us were surrounded by death, with only our four walls and a web camera to make sense of it all. While The Decameron does not directly address the plague, it's interesting to watch knowing the seemingly insurmountable struggle that the world was facing both then and now.
Balancing a mix of humor, love, and the oddities of life, The Decameron is the most thematically even film of the trilogy. Covering a wide variety of topics keeps the film from becoming stale but can sometimes lead to a lack of focus, a trait that befalls most of the trilogy. While starting off strong with engaging cinematography and a story about a young man who's a bit too trusting, this first entry into the trilogy became the most forgettable of the bunch. It has moments that are thought-provoking, but because it lacks a real sense of structure or tone it becomes too scattershot to fully stick the landing it could have. It was by no means bad, but while I could recall plenty of favorite moments from the other two films, this one left me with less to say. That's not to say all is lost because stories like the dying con man tricking his way into sainthood and a husband getting cuckolded by a fake wizard were certainly entertaining. My favorite piece from The Decameron was not one individual story but rather the overarching narrative of the painter. As the film goes on the stories are intercut with scenes of a painter as he tirelessly crafts his masterpiece. While never directly said, it is implied that his painting is a representation of the stories being told throughout the film. At the end of the film, he is finally able to look back and smile on his work as if he'd finally made it to his own seventh day. Unsurprisingly, Pasolini decided to play this role himself. It may be somewhat self-fellating but it captures the artistic process in a unique way that I really haven't seen before. It's very indirect in its approach but it shows the artist's dedication to creating their best work and constantly striving for something greater. Only when they are able to step back and see the fruits of their labor are they able to blissfully smile upon their creation. We are all our own painters and it's up to us to paint our lives in a meaningful way so that when the curtains do close, we can look back and smile.
Moving on to The Canterbury Tales, Pasolini ticks the clock a bit further to late 1300s Europe. Adapted from Geoffrey Chaucer's collection of stories by the same name, The Canterbury Tales uses a group of travelers telling stories as they trek across England to weave its narrative together. It also includes interludes of Geoffrey Chaucer, (of course played by Pasolini) writing down these stories while he giggles at his own jokes. Quite fitting if you ask me. Where The Decameron mixes some larger moral and philosophical themes with its humor, The Canterbury Tales is nearly a straight-up comedy. The vast majority of its stories are dedicated to people besting each other and doing stupid things while drunk and horny. It definitely makes for some interesting iconography when you see what is often portrayed as holy and high society robbing the sick and peeing drunkenly across brothel patrons in what feels like an R-rated Peter Sellers comedy directed by Jean-Luc Godard. At one point a man literally tries to pray his boner away. Pasolini clearly finds himself pretty amusing, and I gotta say, I'm here for it. There is a surprising amount of physical humor in this and even more surprising, it often lands. One segment about a cheating wife and her husband with a room temperature IQ had me full-on belly laughing by the end of it. That segment in particular perfectly set up its punchline right from the beginning and spends the rest of its run time sprinkling small jokes that build to one big laugh. However, the most memorable piece of the film is its ending, which can only be described as disgusting, hilarious, and mentally scarring. I don't know what demon possessed Pasolini to end a film like that, but you got to appreciate the commitment. While The Canterbury Tales doesn't hold as much philosophical weight as The Decameron, I actually like The Canterbury Tales a bit more. It still has some of the odd pacing and presentation issues of its predecessor but builds upon it by including a larger overall structure and keeps the mood a bit lighter, which made the overall experience a bit more enjoyable.
Finishing the trilogy off we have Arabian Nights, the absolute stand-out of the three films. Tied together with a more direct narrative, Arabian Nights is able to be a more focused film while also packing a deeper emotional punch. While the first two films in the trilogy tackle varying themes regarding the way we live our lives, Arabian Nights is a film solely dedicated to love and the insane thing we do to capture that feeling in our hearts. It's a clear homage to the most powerful and deadly of emotions that run rampant through our brains, controlling more than we'd like to admit. In a series that explores how we live our lives, dedicating this last piece to the strongest emotion of them all is the perfect way to end the trilogy. Love leads us into foolish and dark places, but it's only because, without it, our hearts would shatter. When love has nowhere to go, it turns into pain.
To get to the end of the trilogy, we need to go further back in time. This entry brings us back to roughly 200 - 800 A.D. The film follows Nur-e-Din, a young man who falls in love with a slave girl named Zumurrud. After Nur-e-Din mistakenly puts his trust in a stranger, Zumurrud is kidnapped and Nur-e-Din goes on a quest to rescue Zumurrud and return to his love once again. This overarching narrative is told while also interweaving various fantastical tales of the middle east that are adapted from the written collection of stories Arabian Nights, also known as One Thousand and One Nights.
Though many of its stories are great, my favorite story in Arabian Nights was that of Aziz and Aziza. On the day of their wedding, Aziz is entranced by the sight of a beautiful woman named Budur who sends him a cryptic message. So enthralled by her beauty and mysticism Aziz ditches his wedding and dedicates himself to decoding this message and making this mysterious woman his own. In what I can only describe as the ballsiest and dumbest move made by man, Aziz asks his former lover and would-be wife Aziza to help him decrypt the messages a swoon his new lover. Aziza complies and helps Aziz decode each message until he is finally able to find Budur and begin their affair. Shortly after this Aziza commits suicide, triggering a Rube Goldberg downward spiral of events for Aziz. Eventually, he comes to realize that the woman who truly loved him was right in front of him, yet his lack of patience drove him to lust and not love. Lust cannot fill the void in our hearts made for another. Aziz was willing to jump through hoops to be with an unknown object of beauty yet rejected the dedicated lover already at his side. Aziza's love was so true that even when Aziz used her for his own selfish gain she abided. Only after her death by a broken heart was Aziz able to reconcile with the fact that he had the love he desired the whole time, he just refused to be patient and look. While I wouldn't endorse helping your own lover cheat on you, it just proves the power that love holds over us, even when that power may be a knife dangerously close to our hearts. This story is so resonant because many of us have hurt ourselves and others all in the name of love, myself included. It's a lesson that we’ve all had to learn at one point but have often refused to listen to. While it had many other idiosyncrasies and shared the obtuseness of some of the other stories, I found its emotional core to be very resonant in my own life. Patience is a virtue, especially in love.
Besides its thematic shift, what instantly sets Arabian Nights apart is its cinematography. Viewers will notice from the get-go that Pasolini takes a much different approach to how he uses the camera. The cinematography is beautiful in its own naturalistic way. Utilizing luscious landscapes and gorgeous architecture Pasolini allows the environment to do the heavy lifting while the camera serves as our eye into this unique foreign and mystical landscape. While many films portray the Middle East as dull and flat, Pasolini takes the opportunity to blast his setting with color and vibrance, bringing an additional visual life to the film. The Middle East is presented as a fantastical place, adorned with art and mysterious stories around each corner. What makes this so unique in the modern age is that most of Arabian Nights was shot in Iran and Yemen, two countries currently ravaged by war. This gives us an unprecedented look at a landscape that couldn't be replicated today due to the current political climate. There's a great irony in a film about love shot in a land destroyed by hatred, but its poetic nature has only grown through the years. In a film so full of life and love, Pasolini uses his directorial eye once again to use the camera as a visual loudspeaker for his message, creating the most visually engaging film in the trilogy.
While the camera is used exceptionally, performances can be middling. The performances in the Trilogy of Life have always been a mixed bag but this is never been more true than in Arabian nights. While some performances are astounding and the best in the trilogy others can seem to be laughably bad. The trilogy adopts one of the lesser traits of Italian cinema, that of shooting a film without sound and then dubbing over the dialogue later. This was often done because actors of different languages were mixed together and a higher quality of sound can be mastered in a studio setting versus on location. All three films dub over the original language in a mix of Italian dialects leading to various results. Often times the dubbed performances don’t match the ones that are on camera leading to professional actors with emotional and intense voices that are disconnected from their on-screen counterparts. While some performances in Arabian Nights left me thoroughly engaged, others really took me out by being so flat and unenthused. It can be quite unintentionally funny to see someone's face act with the enthusiasm of a cardboard box but have the voice be so utterly mismatched with high energy and passion. Despite this drawback, it still shows Pasolini's dedication to detail as he specifically picks each Italian dialect that closest matches the language of the setting and the original text being adapted. It's odd to have a flaw be designed with this much precision but it shows that Pasolini was committed to making an authentic experience in his own misguided way. Even with many of its imperfections, Arabian Nights is head and shoulders above the rest. Its unified storytelling allows for a much more focused film that left me feeling more attached and involved in its characters and world. It’s as if Pasolini used this ancient literary text to create his own arthouse fantasy film. It’s ultimately a sweet movie about man’s ever-burning desire for love, and to hold who we love close to our hearts.
The trilogy aside, how is the Criterion box set? While I won't necessarily be singing its praises I did feel like I got my money's worth, that is paying half off at only $40 compared to the retail $80. The packaging is presented nicely in Criterion fashion, but the films themselves come in papery cardstock fold-out cases rather than solid plastic snap cases. These fold-outs are then tucked inside the box set with only the pressure of each case to keep them from moving and shifting. They get the job done but are susceptible to bending, tearing, and general wear. For the money, I would have appreciated a tighter build or snap case. The cases themself have some nice artwork and do a good job at representing each film. This probably isn't news to anybody who has collected Criterions in the past, but it's nice that these didn't get the Special K treatment that Citizen Kane got. There is also a small booklet tucked in with the Blu-rays that covers all three films. This is probably the highlight of the packaging. Appropriately opening with an article written by Passolini about his personal rejection of the trilogy, the book then details the production and significance of each film, also including some high-quality screenshots and BTS photos from their production. While not a massive booklet it provides some nice insight into Passolini's creative process and cultural impact. The restorations are solid for the most part but do contain a noticeable amount of damaged frames. The Decameron in particular has some scenes near the end where a thin red line cuts through the frame flicking on and off. It's not massive but it is noticeable. I'm not sure of the exact restoration process or the quality of prints Criterion had access to, but it feels like a couple of these things should have been ironed out before release. The audio quality is fairly standard. It's clear and consistent with no major issues, but it's not exactly going to be blowing you away with a full 5.1 surround sound mix. That being said these aren't the kind of films that warrant that kind of audio treatment. Beyond the films, there are a limited amount of bonus features. There are some interviews from Cannes, trailers, and mini-documentaries, but those mini-docs are really more like glorified slideshows with narration. For the most part, this is understandable given the age of these films. It's not like today where they could have had some PA running around with a DSLR getting BTS footage during the whole shoot. The best way to think of this package is the quality level of one Criterion restoration, split across three films. For $40 and three films, it's not a bad deal but I probably wouldn't splurge for the full $80. You can find it on sale quite often on amazon.
Once I had finally completed the trilogy, I found myself asking one central question. A question that I've been asking myself for some time now. After all these films, why do I keep coming back to Pasolini? What makes his brand of filmmaking so unique that even when it falters I feel the need to keep coming back? I think it's because I’m attracted to Pasolini’s sensibility as an artist. I don’t know how to describe it any better than that. He’s the kind of guy who made the films he wanted to make and said the things he wanted to say without caring what others thought. He did what he thought was important, and fuck anybody else who said otherwise. I guess when I reflect on my own career, that’s what I want for myself as a filmmaker. I can say something about the greater meaning of life or I can make a short film about dick jokes and it’s all still unabashedly me. When Pasolini released the Trilogy of his life many of his own friends bashed the films for not directly speaking or adhering to their own political views. What’s the point of living behind a veil when the people you’re trying to impress don’t even like you? Live for the people and ideas that you hold value in. Love life, love those you hold dear, and cherish the moments you have even when they're painful, because life works itself out in its own weird way, and I'm glad Pasolini's films are here to remind us of that.
The Decameron
Director Pier Palo Pasolini
Runtime 1 Hr 52 Min
Format Digital (Bluray)
Release Date 1971
The Canterbury Tales
Director Pier Paolo Pasolini
Runtime 1 Hr 49 Min
Format Digital (Bluray)
Release Date 1972
Arabian Nights
Director Pier Paolo Pasolini
Runtime 2 Hr 10 Min
Format Digital (Bluray)
Release Date 1974