This is a film about The End of The World.
But the end of the world happens on more than one level of reality!
This movie has been described as "science fiction", which was all that was needed to attract my attention.
But this has to be one of the most low-tech "science-fiction" films I have ever seen in my life!
Is it possible that people in Italy still don't have colour televisions? I don't think, so, somehow! So what is this movie REALLY about?
This movie is loaded with symbolism!
From my viewpoint the symbolism in this movie focused upon the Papal Coronation or High Mass on Black & White television sets, white paint, a white cat, and a cement factory (cement is also WHITE!) ...get it?!
This is a movie about demons (literally, the character "Soro", a paedophile/child-murderer "does she have a boyfriend?", he asks of a 15 year old girl, and he winks at the children, trying to gain access to their house at the front door. He has already killed 7 children, would have killed Alé, making it 8, if could have, and, coincidentally, he's out of prison after 20 years, and now he's out to get "revenge"!
This is a movie about confronting a demon at the End of the World! It is a metaphor for the pointlessness of existence and the impossibility of individual freedom under the yoke and tyranny of Roman Catholicism: Even at the end of the world, when you would think all that mattered would be pursuing the smallest possibility of survival or else reconciling oneself to one's fate - "certain" death via collision with the Earth with a meteor "FIVE times the size" of the one that wiped out the dinosaurs ("Pentagrama Films", by the way - if you don't believe this is a movie that exposes the Catholic Church!) , the human and sincere protagonist, Alé, is bogged down, in Kafkaesque fashion, unable to act freely, as though being set into concrete against his will by a demon who approaches him, will not leave, attracts his attention, occupies his field of view, threatens him so that he must be on his guard against him, makes him appear to be disturbed and unfriendly, and then, finally, besets him, kills and kidnaps children he is impelled to protect from Soros, and struggles with him in a pointless, meaningless, conflict in which only one of them can survive and so live, (EITHER good OR evil) until the end.
Then, finally, his victory over the demon is a Pyrrhic victory - at the end he has only reconciliation with himself, only the return of what he had lost: He has gained absolutely nothing ... and then it is all over (again)!
The white cat = The Pope ... (and the 'Cat-alike' Church!) - a demon focused upon the male principle, and dressed in the colour of it: White ... and the light, above, and from that focus upon white and light come conceptual-'concrete' from the "concrete factory" - "it traps you!" - sterility, order, perversion, control, law, censorship, prevention of freedom or desire to act, bureaucratic stifling of free-volition, legal restriction upon freedom to even exist, mania and madness - all assented to in the hope of gaining protection from, and power over, demons - the demons that ARE the Pope and Roman Catholicism, the demons that claim to be paternal protectors! The Vatican is the Devil and his demons in fancy dress - and this movie is a morality play about them, about good vs. evil, and how demons have made evil appear, in masquerade and with film-flam propaganda, to be good! "Why did you tell them a pack of lies?" demands Alé, the protagonist, of his mother ("mother church"?) when she lies and completely deceives all the children: Censorship and lies!
The TRUTH, revealed in this film, is that natural and supernatural reality are the REVERSE of what the status quo proclaims they are: "No crucifixes!" says Alé at his mother's newly prepared grave, after she has died in fright after seeing a vision of Alé, as a child, hanging from the tree above, and so in shock, or fear of the demon, Soros. And then Alé and the children bury her in the open field: "No prayers!", he says!
I hope I have convinced you, that this film is beyond its physical-plane science-fiction theme, in that it involves almost-surreal imagery and existential meaningfulness, and is in addition to, and interwoven with, it's enigmatic, powerful and macrocosmic science-fiction theme, a metaphysical film about the final supernatural struggle betwixt good and evil ... at The End of The World! And the demon, Soros is, I think, logically, in this film - and beyond it - the Pope, The Devil!
But the end of the world happens on more than one level of reality!
This movie has been described as "science fiction", which was all that was needed to attract my attention.
But this has to be one of the most low-tech "science-fiction" films I have ever seen in my life!
Is it possible that people in Italy still don't have colour televisions? I don't think, so, somehow! So what is this movie REALLY about?
This movie is loaded with symbolism!
From my viewpoint the symbolism in this movie focused upon the Papal Coronation or High Mass on Black & White television sets, white paint, a white cat, and a cement factory (cement is also WHITE!) ...get it?!
This is a movie about demons (literally, the character "Soro", a paedophile/child-murderer "does she have a boyfriend?", he asks of a 15 year old girl, and he winks at the children, trying to gain access to their house at the front door. He has already killed 7 children, would have killed Alé, making it 8, if could have, and, coincidentally, he's out of prison after 20 years, and now he's out to get "revenge"!
This is a movie about confronting a demon at the End of the World! It is a metaphor for the pointlessness of existence and the impossibility of individual freedom under the yoke and tyranny of Roman Catholicism: Even at the end of the world, when you would think all that mattered would be pursuing the smallest possibility of survival or else reconciling oneself to one's fate - "certain" death via collision with the Earth with a meteor "FIVE times the size" of the one that wiped out the dinosaurs ("Pentagrama Films", by the way - if you don't believe this is a movie that exposes the Catholic Church!) , the human and sincere protagonist, Alé, is bogged down, in Kafkaesque fashion, unable to act freely, as though being set into concrete against his will by a demon who approaches him, will not leave, attracts his attention, occupies his field of view, threatens him so that he must be on his guard against him, makes him appear to be disturbed and unfriendly, and then, finally, besets him, kills and kidnaps children he is impelled to protect from Soros, and struggles with him in a pointless, meaningless, conflict in which only one of them can survive and so live, (EITHER good OR evil) until the end.
Then, finally, his victory over the demon is a Pyrrhic victory - at the end he has only reconciliation with himself, only the return of what he had lost: He has gained absolutely nothing ... and then it is all over (again)!
The white cat = The Pope ... (and the 'Cat-alike' Church!) - a demon focused upon the male principle, and dressed in the colour of it: White ... and the light, above, and from that focus upon white and light come conceptual-'concrete' from the "concrete factory" - "it traps you!" - sterility, order, perversion, control, law, censorship, prevention of freedom or desire to act, bureaucratic stifling of free-volition, legal restriction upon freedom to even exist, mania and madness - all assented to in the hope of gaining protection from, and power over, demons - the demons that ARE the Pope and Roman Catholicism, the demons that claim to be paternal protectors! The Vatican is the Devil and his demons in fancy dress - and this movie is a morality play about them, about good vs. evil, and how demons have made evil appear, in masquerade and with film-flam propaganda, to be good! "Why did you tell them a pack of lies?" demands Alé, the protagonist, of his mother ("mother church"?) when she lies and completely deceives all the children: Censorship and lies!
The TRUTH, revealed in this film, is that natural and supernatural reality are the REVERSE of what the status quo proclaims they are: "No crucifixes!" says Alé at his mother's newly prepared grave, after she has died in fright after seeing a vision of Alé, as a child, hanging from the tree above, and so in shock, or fear of the demon, Soros. And then Alé and the children bury her in the open field: "No prayers!", he says!
I hope I have convinced you, that this film is beyond its physical-plane science-fiction theme, in that it involves almost-surreal imagery and existential meaningfulness, and is in addition to, and interwoven with, it's enigmatic, powerful and macrocosmic science-fiction theme, a metaphysical film about the final supernatural struggle betwixt good and evil ... at The End of The World! And the demon, Soros is, I think, logically, in this film - and beyond it - the Pope, The Devil!