Page - 98 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 05/01

accentuated by the choral voices and the pressing rhythm of the scenes. It is therefore at odds with the scenes of the conspiracy of the Sanhedrin, in which the subdued tone of the song almost seems to add a parenthesis to the words of Caiaphas. Finally, the piece recurs in the deposition of Jesus’ dead body, with the same charge as the first one, drawing a parallel between the beginning and end of Jesus’ mission on earth. This piece, like the following one, also undoubtedly refers to the failure of the revolutionary design. The major point bearing this out lies in the long speech to the crowd against the priests and Pharisees, under the threatening gaze of the soldiers. In these scenes the background to the words of Jesus is “You Fell Vic- tim” (Вы жертвою пали), a funeral march of the Russian revolutionaries which was subsequently adopted by the Soviet Union and was incorporated into Shos- takovich’s Symphony no. 11 in G minor. The Russian composer’s work concerns events that took place in 1905, including Bloody Sunday, when the army fired on defenceless demonstrators outside the Winter Palace. The soldiers’ violence also returns in the scenes of Il Vangelo secondo Matteo when arrests are made and people captured to disperse the crowd around Jesus.22 THE KOL NIDRE The final motif is Kol Nidre, a very elusive theme that has only rarely been recog- nized. It is a piece in Aramaic performed in the Jewish context before the litur- gical service of Yom Kippur. Its name comes from its opening words, as many Jewish texts do. Kol Nidre means “all vows”, and its origin is more that of a legal declaration than of a prayer as such. It is an introduction to Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement in the Jewish religious calendar and the last in a series of 10 days of fasting that begins with Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year. With the recita- tion of the Kol Nidre all the vows and promises made during the previous year are annulled. Even more interestingly, up until the final destruction of the Tem- ple in Jerusalem in 70 CE, part of the ritual of Yom Kippur involved the offering up of two goats (Leviticus 16:7–10), one of which was sacrificed to God, while the second was left alive as atonement – the so-called scapegoat. All this takes on a particular meaning when related to Pasolini’s film, where the Kol Nidre is the musical theme of just one scene: Jesus’ last supper and the establishment of the Eucharist. The connection here is fairly clear, given the Christian symbol- ogy of the lamb offered in sacrifice for the remission of sins. Just as the Jewish prayer provides release from the weight of vows and oaths in anticipation of 22 In the Gospel of Matthew no mention is made of the presence of soldiers or of arrests. The only pas- sage speaking about the crowd is in Matthew 23:1, when Jesus begins to list the wrongs of the Phari- sees. In the film all this is rendered visually as a people’s assembly with disorder and riots. 98 | Nicola Martellozzo www.jrfm.eu 2019, 5/1