Pier Paolo Pasolini and the Reason of a Dream

I’m sure if I knew anything about the director profiled in this documentary, I would have gotten more out of it. Pasolini was a poet, philosopher (very leftist and Marxist), and a filmmaker who tended to make films with rather provocative images. His final film was “Salò” (the DVD of which is so rare that it recently sold for $700 on eBay), based on the work of The Marquis de Sade, and Pasolini was murdered shortly after it was made. This documentary didn’t feel like a documentary to me, seeming to deal more with presenting Pasolini’s philosophy and words than with documenting his life. The look of the film was also a major distraction, looking at times like it was shot on old 8 mm film, transferred to VHS, and then transferred back to film for projection. Really, at times it was so fuzzy that you weren’t sure what you were seeing, and I don’t think that was an intentional effect.This is not recommended except to fans of the subject. Seen at the San Francisco International Film Festival on 4/28/2002.