Al Pacino and producer Barry Navidi will attend the screening.
Drawing on the startlingly-original approach taken in his acclaimed 1996 documentary, Looking for Richard,
Al Pacino explores myth, meaning and madness in Oscar Wilde’s play Salomé.
Originally written in French in 1891, Salomé was subsequently translated into English by Wilde’s lover Lord Alfred Douglas. Based on the New Testament story of Salomé, the text is steeped in blood, incest and lust, hypnotically lingering on the destructive nature of desire and the dangers of malignant love. At the time of its publication the play caused huge controversy and was denounced for its supposed immorality and blasphemous imagery. It was seen as a radical challenge to the hypocritical Victorian mores of its time and its tragedy was to prove sadly prophetic for Wilde himself.
The richness and lyrical beauty of Wilde’s play (which Pacino first encountered in Steven Berkoff’s acclaimed staging for
Dublin’s Gate Theatre) has proved both an inspiration and indeed an obsession for generations of artists. For Pacino there is at the heart of the piece a mysterious power, a sort of hypnotic allure, that the film seeks to unravel.
Wild Salomé is as multilayered as its source material, being both a documentation of a reading of the text as well as a meditation on the play’s dark themes. It is also a journey to try and understand and contextualise Oscar Wilde in all his reckless, tragic glory. But – perhaps most fascinating of all – it is an illuminating and honest glimpse into the work and methods of Pacino himself as he wrestles with the play’s complexities and the attendant pressures of producing and directing a film. - Mark O’Halloran, Screenwriter and actor
