When a mirror is held to your soul, what will stare back? This is the question at the heart of Theorem, a class-conscious, spiritual surrealist satire that cuts to the heart of the very wealthy. Less 'eat the rich,' more 'force the rich to confront the emptiness and vapidity of their hollow existences.' Instead of ritual bloodletting, Pasolini is more interested in taking out every single bobby pin that holds this family's string board together and making something of the mess.
The film itself flirts with a provocative and somewhat blasphemous concept for its era. Terrence Stamp takes on the role of a mysterious young visitor to this family, whose wealth comes from a nebulous factory. The visitor meets the needs of each family member - sexually satisfies the mother, introduces the daughter to romantic attraction, liberates the son's repressed queerness. And all the while, he holds sparse, mostly unheard conversations with the father, as he's convinced to shed his possessions and turn his factory over the workers.
I have not seen this analysis elsewhere, but to me, Theorem is in conversation with Pasolini's preoccupation in Salo - mankind with the absence of goodness or holiness. Here, he creates a quasi-messianic figure who is the ultimate embodiment of good, only to take him away and leave his subjects struggling to make sense of what to do with themselves. In a microcosm, this is stirring and upsetting domestic horror that blends the ethereal and psychological to tremendous effect.
But peel back the layers here, and you can scry a macrocosm of Christ's relationship with mankind at large. He promised us everything, then left us to argue over the meanings of His teachings. This has had such a detrimental effect that it has sullied His love and teachings en masse - churches committing atrocities, minorities being persecuted, money changing hands. To build the biggest churches, the highest skyscrapers in His name. But is this, truly, in His spirit?
Supporting this read is his arrival and departure being heralded by an 'angel,' who here is a neurodivergent man. Already Pasolini makes his beliefs known - his hatred of the church but genuine curiosity and conviction in belief leads him to understand that should Christ appear to capitalist society, he would be led by outsiders and teach us theory. Show us to make art that dismantles cruelty that the world can't understand. Show us love that would make us appear mad in the eyes of the world. Show us that our possessions meant nothing and were to be stripped in public, leaving us to scream naked at mountains until it all makes sense.
Most compelling here is the maid, who is gifted divine healing abilities from the mysterious visitor. (Consider her the Samaritan woman at the well, a la John 4:4–42). Stamp makes his appearance known to her first, which is in line with the tradition of Christ appearing to the most destitute and downcast. (This was dramatized very well recently in The Chosen.) Yet for all of her abilities to heal the sick, for all her attempts to not take their food, she ultimately is subsumed by the realization that divinity cannot save these people from their material conditions. Thus she resigns to a tragic, poetic fate that is one of the most haunting moments I've watched in any film.
Where this leaves the viewer is going to be deeply personal. But where it left me, personally, was with a deeper understanding of the limits of belief. That even in the presence of Christ - or Terrence Stamp - we must practice humility, self-reflection, and admission of our desires. Because without these, we are lost - doomed to participate in a rat race that starves children and buries servants.