Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Death in Venice
I have been around and around on the subject of Thomas Mann's Death in Venice, both the story and the Luchino Visconti film made from it. After several readings and viewings, including watching the 1971 film again this week, it seems that Visconti has taken what is essentially a tale about an old pervert and inflated it with a debate about the nature of beauty. In the film, Aschenbach argues that beauty in art can only be produced by suppressing the natural world and its base instincts. True beauty comes from an elevation of the spirit and mind. But in Venice he is confronted with a human specimen that refutes all this high-sounding theorizing. The contradictions are painful psychically, matching the physical pain of the cholera that ultimately kills him. Visconti's slow, watchful eye is among the film's strongest features. He sets up a scene and then executes long panning shots that offer the viewer a wealth of details. He also uses the zoom to dramatic effect. Art like this requires not only the spirit and the mind, but hard work.
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It seems to me that the subject/theme is so simple...It is about the ultimate decay of physical beauty. The film has all the artifice of physical beauty including the beautiful setting--and for this Venice is perfect---in its beautiful decaying state. Then the main character is still trying to retain beauty (the boy) even after he has been affected by a death wind ( from Africa) to take him away from the physical to ash. He outstretches his hand as he dies--toward the boy who is left posing in his beauty. All this pretence is artificial anyway as it is really about the soul becoming decayed with thoughts of seducing the boy. Pitiful, but so watchable.
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