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As Good As It Gets

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

Composer Gustave Aschenbach is sick with stress. He goes to a seaside resort only to obsess about a beautiful young boy who is on vacation with his family. The vacationers discover that a cholera outbreak in the nearby city of Venice has been kept from them.This is good controversial Italian art-house. It's a tale of desire but not simply a sexual desire. The boy often looks angelic. His beauty is ethereal as well as sexual. Gustave's struggle is palpable in the sweat of his brow. This is not a film of plot. Director Luchino Visconti incorporates a lot of classical music in a study of this man. The demeanor of his pale sickly haunted face is a story in itself.

I have seen this brilliant film more than five times, and l have never seen a more beautiful film made for the screen in any country; every frame of this film is like a magical painting, to savor, and to see again and again. The acting by Dirk Borgard reached his peak here in 'Death in Venice', Silvana Mangano has never been more elegant. The Music by Mahler is haunting. This film is poetic master piece, it is the most beautiful work of Luchino Visconti's direction that take's you for a ride in History, and place, as no other film has ever done; right now, as l write this, l want to see it again. The young Swedish actor, Bjorn Anderson, is like a mystical painting of an innocent individual, and only a boy, he is a danger to a cultivated man of a certain age; well performed by the young actor. The scenes of the degradation of the elder professor played so brilliantly by Dirk Bogard, is so good, it is painful to see this can happen to a man of letters, l recommend this film on every level.,C.J.Blanda

In DIV, Visconti overstates the Mahlerishness of Aschenbach to the point of confusion, and worse, does the same to the 'boy-ogler' interpretation of Aschenbach to the point of insult. The result ends up feeling like an horrific parody - or even fictional bio - of the great composer / conductor.Mann, upon whose work the film is apparently based, much admired Mahler, and, learning of his death, gave Aschenbach Mahler's first name and (apparently), his appearance - but unlike Visconti, Mann cast him as a writer, not a composer. Mann's written work was already mostly finalised when these 'honours' were bestowed at any rate. But more importantly, Mann is widely thought to have drawn from a number of different sources for his main character; different traits from different people, and to specific ends. In short, the clumsiness of the film's choice of visuals, seems to lecherise Mahler himself through a 'little boy obsessed' Aschenbach, and insinuate something of Mahler himself which has no real basis. The overplayed likeness left the feeling that what was going on was really nothing to do with the novella, but instead a 'secret revealed' about Mahler. And so the story lost all philosophical meaning immediately, and became something more like slander or gossip, leaving the perhaps less studied Mahler-appreciating audience to be misled into supposing all sorts of things - even trying to extrapolate something of the historical relationship between Mahler and Schonberg (as if Mahler's helping of Schonberg required any more motivation than memories of his aspiring composer / musician younger brother, Otto!)But aside from this terrific complaint which I might at least be able to (unreasonably!) write off to misinterpretation, the film's slow broody stillness - and labored sincerity - cannot reach a shadow of the way to the effortlessly profound music which it misappropriated. Way back in the day (July 19, 1971), Alan Rich did a great review of this movie in the New York Magazine. "...the insult to Mahler doesn't like in any imputation about homosexuality, not even in the way this element is luridly underlined in the movie. It lies, rather, in the cheap, uncomprehending niggle-naggle about the arts that Visconti puts into the mouths of Aschenbach-Mahler and Alfred [-Schonberg]..."It's easy enough to find on googlebooks. That review pretty much says it all - other than one more comment which desperately need to be made, and that being, that the film's lack of subtlety pushed it Aschenbach firmly into 'little boy ogler' territory, which was simply creepy, but which also obliterated much of the intelligent introspection and 'longing for the lost days of youth' that the film might have otherwise evoked. Someone likes it I guess. Not me. Tacky. Slow. Self-serious. Overblown. Self-important. Failed art- house bordering on mockumentry bordering on defamation.

Some others here have written so eloquently and fully about this film's many virtues that I see no point in saying more about them. I shall instead say why I find it not quite flawless, but first I shall underline my appreciation of it by observing I love this film despite being intensely bored by some acclaimed films with little dialogue or action. Mostly I think this must come down to the film being such a rich visual treat, but hearing that some find it boring despite that, I wonder if this might not be a rare case where it is a great advantage to have read the novella first, as I did, for Mann's description of Aschenbach's developing and conflicting emotions is absolutely masterful. Perhaps this helps one feel as Aschenbach feels more than one could just from Bogarde's excellent acting.Visconti allowed himself more than two hours to bring to life a very short novel. There was thus none of the usual necessity to cut any of the novel, and since the latter is a masterpiece, every reason to be faithful to it. Nothing that matters has been cut and the film is generally faithful. Nevertheless, its only slight flaws come from being not faithful enough.The main change in the story is that Aschenbach is changed from a writer to a musician. The reasons are understandable and I don't think it matters much except that Visconti made it the basis for a series of flashbacks in which Aschenbach has slightly corny debates about the purpose of musical creation. I find these tiresome distractions.A lesser flaw for me is the choice of 16-year-old Björn Andrésen to play 14-year-old Tadzio. I realise from the numerous superlative remarks made about his beauty that most will disagree with me on this. I agree with others it was critical to the film's success that Tadzio's actor be beautiful and I can appreciate Andrésen's beauty enough to understand how Visconti's choice succeeded. Though personally I find him too pallid (and his hair too '70s for an otherwise wonderfully authentic depiction of 1911), my objection is not that he was not beautiful enough, but that it would have been easy and better to find an equally beautiful 14-year-old to play the role. There is quite a difference between boys of 14 and 16 and Mann had his reasons for depicting Tadzio as looking 14. Andrésen's rather feminine appearance for his age is a poor substitute for the more natural androgyny of 14. I think Mann's choice of 14 was intended both for the broad appeal of this quality and in considered juxtaposition to Aschenbach's age: the one near the beginning of his romantic sensibility while the other was at its end. Much to his credit, Visconti did set out to find a younger boy, so he was not making the ignoble concession to social correctness other directors have made under similar circumstances, and I would not mention it if the film was not otherwise so nearly perfect.As many appear still to be unaware of it, it may be interesting to mention that Death in Venice is partly a true story. Mann having already decided to write a story about a great writer who succumbs to passion for a youngster and to base the writer physically on the recently deceased composer Mahler, the rest of the story fell into place in detail when he arrived in Venice and promptly fell in love with a boy; in his own words, "nothing was invented." Gilbert Adair wrote a book on this called The Real Tadzio, exploring also the life of Wladyslaw Moes, who claimed to be the real boy (which I doubt for reasons I have explained in a review of it).Edmund Marlowe, author of Alexander's Choice, a story of similar but requited love, www.amazon.com/dp/1481222112