Teorema (Theorem)1968
Teorema (Theorem) (1968)
TOMATOMETER
AUDIENCE SCORE
Critic Consensus: Anchored by powerful performances and tied together by writer-director Pier Paolo Pasolini at the helm, Teorema poses intriguing questions behind a veil of mystery.
Teorema (Theorem) Photos
Movie Info
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Cast
as The Visitor
as Lucia
as Paolo
as Odetta
as Servant
as Doctor
as Messenger
as Old Peasant
as 2nd Servant
as Boy
as Boy at the Station
as Second Boy
as Interwiever
as Pietro
Critic Reviews for Teorema (Theorem)
All Critics (27) | Top Critics (9) | Fresh (22) | Rotten (5) | DVD (2)
The film, made in 1968, was provocative then and remains so now. But it doesn't elucidate its ambivalent moral secrets easily.
It is as if Pasolini has imagined how Italy's bland, complacent, stagnant governing class could be blown wide open: like putting a hundredweight of dynamite in the San Andreas fault.
Whichever of the various interpretations you ascribe to this socio-political parody, the quality is undeniable.
The narrative, almost silent in the first half, is unusually clear for a film by Pasolini. Performance by all members of the cast are praiseworthy, though Stamp dominates the first half and Betti, the second.
What would be pretentious and strained in the hands of most directors, with Pasolini takes on an intense air of magical revelation.
Highly regarded in some quarters, Pier Paulo Pasolini's Teorema is basically a film about Terence Stamp's crotch.
Audience Reviews for Teorema (Theorem)
A mysterious young buck visits a wealthy household, makes love to the father, son, mother, wife, and housekeeper and then leaves; all of them are lost without him and fall into separate strange tragedies. Another dry and dull, and inexplicably influential, experiment from Italian masochist Pier Paolo Passolini.
Super Reviewer
Arresting and profound! The film begins with the ending. Stamp acts as an awakener to the pseudo-existence of the bourgeoisie. Stamp's character can be summarized by a Nick Cave lyric: I found god and all of his devils inside h(im). The second half of the film, or upon Stamp's departure, is lingeringly complex. Upon initial viewing and at a cursory level, I find each character reacting to their a...wakening or crisis of the spirit, through means of the physical, insanity, art, sexuality, misguided spirituality, or stripped naked of materialism, possibly lost in the horror of recognition. I know there is a statement in this film about society, the spirit, and its relation to the human condition and experience: I just don't know what to think of it yet.
Super Reviewer
A very Christian rumination: what is the meaning of life? Pasolini poetically, lyrically offers the Book of Ecclessiates by Solomon (" ... everything is vanity ") for consideration. Made in the Sixties it reflects some of the counter- cultural ideas that were sweeping through the affluent West at that time.
Super Reviewer
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