Stars and Music News

Questions raised by films like Salo are often concerned with boundaries of decency. What is the line between poetic and pornographic? Striking and vulgar? Art and smut? Director Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salo, or The 120 Days of Sodom, whose title alone indicates the mildly traumatizing viewing experience one can expect, has been called both high art and exploitative filmmaking. It’s difficult to argue either either stance with conviction; the film is as coarse as it is intellectual, and sometimes it occupies both realms simultaneously. It is violent, gratuitous, and easily one of the most difficult, disturbingly visceral movies you will ever experience. After being condemned, banned in some countries, and ignored for years, The Criterion Collection has reissued it for audiences far and wide to discover—if they’re willing to brave the assault.

“Controversial” does not begin to describe Salo’s graphic content, which was adapted from a work by the Marquis de Sade, unsurprisingly. It opens