Abel Ferrara’s Padre Pio is a fusion of two souls, each as rough-hewn and fragmentary as the other. Set in the immediate aftermath of World War I in the Italian village of San Giovanni Rotondo and filmed on location, it’s partly a biopic about the Catholic saint Pio of Pietrelcina (Shia Labeouf), for whom every waking moment seems a dark night of the soul. But it’s also a dramatization of the struggle between the landed gentry and the soldiers who return disillusioned from the war, culminating in violence after a stolen election.
Ferrara and co-writer Maurzio Braucci, instead of treating Catholicism and Marxism as antagonistic, find resonance in their iconography, their shared valorization of the downtrodden, and the zeal of their adherents—as well as their crises of faith. It isn’t heresy to say that Padre Pio is a spiritual successor to Pier Paolo Pasolini’s The Gospel According to St.
Ferrara and co-writer Maurzio Braucci, instead of treating Catholicism and Marxism as antagonistic, find resonance in their iconography, their shared valorization of the downtrodden, and the zeal of their adherents—as well as their crises of faith. It isn’t heresy to say that Padre Pio is a spiritual successor to Pier Paolo Pasolini’s The Gospel According to St.
- 5/30/2023
- by William Repass
- Slant Magazine
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