DEATH IN VENICE (1971) *** I remember reading, in the L.A. Times nearly thirty years ago, about a very affluent doctor who fell very, very ill. He recovered, and when he did he dedicated the rest of his life to producing (and learning to play) one of Mahler's Symphonies (the Fourth?) as much as possible. This reminds me of that, because Mahler is all over it, and matched perfectly with Luchino Visconti's beautiful film, one that demands the description "elegiac," even though I can't quite figure out how to use it. Literalists may dismiss it as a portrayal of a (latent? certainly bourgeois and repressed) homosexual hopelessly obsessed with a pubescent boy. That may be the plot delivery system, but it's certainly missing the point. Thomas Mann (whose novel I admit to reading only about 30 pages of: it was good, but not what I was in the mood for) was an important limb of that indescribably brilliant Germanic intellectualism that exploded from the roots of Nietzsche. The aging-and very ill-composer's obsession with the boy can be contemplated at some length and various angles, but essentially the boy is a totem, the embodiment of an ideal of beauty; a source of inspiration and frustration, ambivalence, the unattainable, and ultimate joy and truth. Björn Andrésen is brilliant as the boy, but the film achieves its greatness in his reflections on Dirk Bogarde. Dirk is surprising casting, for me. In his popular early comedic success there was always a suggestion that his effeminate nature resulted from something beyond merely wishing to behave like a gentleman-he then burst out of the closet in Modesty Blaise in a flaming explosion unmatched in mainstream cinema this side of Dr. Frank-N-Furter, but…as entertaining as those roles were, there was nothing to suggest that kind of depth. It is, simply, a brilliant performance; an extraordinarily difficult role handled so deftly as to defy any acknowledgment of difficulty. Every thought, every nuance communicated, only rarely with the necessity of words. A lot of people (and me, but to a slight extent) may suffer from the almost entire lack of pacing…it's a film about an ill man, and the pacing starts off on life support, and not everyone's going to respond to Mahler (I rarely listen to him, on purpose; he's perfect for a certain mood but it's not one I cultivate), but I don't think that there's any denying that this is a film that set out to do something very difficult, and did it.
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