The equation [of Theorem (Teorema)] is simple. There is a family as perfect in form as one of Plato's proofs … father, mother, son, daughter, maid. The family institution, self-contained in its house, its home, is the private body politic in which the individuals should—so we have been educated to believe—derive the security they need to free themselves from their mythological beings—free as individuals, whenever necessary, to transcend the confines of the family, to become good social people, fearlessly taking their place in the more harrowing politics of the institutions of the world. Their guest, a beautiful, quiet young man, arrives and, quite passively, is used by each of them to sublimate their unconscious, repressed needs. He is the catalyst they use to confront in themselves that 'self' which has been denied fulfilment by their family social situation. For a brief moment, each one is gathered into the artifice of eternity … they experience fulfilment of their entire beings….

The lack of any sense of meaning, religious or otherwise, is compensated for, in each of them, by perilous, private crusades … each must seek the existential solution to his own spiritual needs. The common denominator of the theorem is the desert, the void … and each member of the splintered group fulfils his private suffering….

The only theorems ever evolved to explain the tragic insult that we resemble mere animals, fornicating and doing dirty things at night in bed for years and years and years, goddammit, were evolved by two sets of people … those who admitted to emotions as they are, the artists, and those admitted to them, by default as it were, in negative … the Church. (p. 38)

If you go deep enough into the myths and taboos of any individual mind, you go through all time and reach the equations of mystery and fear that will never, never be solved. We shall always be individuals, yet we shall always need to build institutions to protect us from our Godless solitude. Clearly the present solution, for the privileged few, who we see here in this film, or for the under-privileged many who have politics as their religion, is not the right one. So deeply moving and pessimistic is this film, showing as it does that we project our inner need of God only so briefly on to the world, having so little faith to keep it alive, for such a short time. I can only speculate that the Catholics who voted Pasolini his well-deserved prize (it deserves all the prizes) must have said, 'If this won't drive them in, then nothing will.' Nothing … will. (p. 39)