Death in Venice

Death in Venice
The beautifully made Visconti film starring Dirk Bogarde left an indelible impression on my young mind when I first saw it. Based on the Thomas Mann novel (‘Der Todd in Venedig’ 1912) and supported by the other-worldly music score of Gustav Mahler’ Adagietto, 4th movement of Mahler’s 5th symphony, haunting my memory all these years.
It is unforgettable for three reasons: 1. everyone wants to go to Venice sooner or later in their lives. 2. Death is a certainty everyone has to face. 3. The irony of dying in such an exquisite place which we all know but hate to admit is busy ‘dying’ by sinking deeper and deeper into the water.
Gustav von Aschenbach is a writer who has received nobility bestowed upon him because of his artistic achievements. But he has developed writer’s block and has no inspiration left. He decides to go on holiday. He spots an old man who has his hair dyed red and his face painted who tries to be jolly with a few young people hanging around him. Aschenbach is disgusted.
He arrives in Venice and books into a hotel in where he notices an aristocratic Polish family at a table in the dining hall. The youth, Tadzio, in a sailor suit, is a perfect picture of health and youth, like a Greek god. Somehow the image of youth inspires, uplifts and eventually obsesses him.
As he wanders through the streets of Venice he sees municipal workers putting up notices about an outbreak of cholera and warning people to avoid eating shell fish. But he is caught in his obsession of his muse and decides to face the danger by staying on in Venice.
When Aschenbach realises how his appearance has changed he goes to the barbershop where he is advised to have his hair coloured and his face painted to look better. He allows it and looks worse – just like the old man he noticed on the boat.
Although he never speaks to the youth he does follow him around to the disturbance of the Tadzio’s family.
One day the Polish prepares to leave. Aschenbach walks out to the beach to sit on a deck chair. Tadzio and another young boy have an argument and Tadzio gets beaten, easily.
When Aschenbach wants to get up to comfort the youth, he falls of the chair and dies of Cholera. His body is discovered a few minutes later.
Aschenbach means ash brook, ashes strewn in a river…Venice is a city built on rivers and canals. What an ironic place to die…

It is a simple story. There is beauty and heart break, joy and sadness, bitterness and sweet, glorious and gory all mixed in one recipe that produces a masterpiece.
There are a lot of allusions to Greek mythology and Freudian philosophy and you can read all sorts of other influences and references into it, but the simple beauty and the stark reality of an artist spending his last few days in a place of beauty, finding the beauty of youth to admire again and then submitting to the encroaching disease, almost by will. It is like he said; this is where I hope to end it all. What a beautiful place to die, Venice. In the Greek sense of literature it is a kind of tragedy: a hero chooses the path that leads to his demise even though the audience knows he could decide to avoid it.

It is not the kind of movie you want to see again and again, but once you have seen it you see it again – inside. It is unavoidable. All of us want to see Venice. All of us will die. And all of us know Venice too is dying…