In May 1911, the writer Thomas Mann took his wife and brothers to Venice to travel. It happened that a local infectious disease broke out. Several people were preparing to return to China. But in the collapsed hotel, Thomas met the beautiful boy in a striped sailor shirt that made him fascinated. .
The protagonist of Thomas Mann's novel "Break in Venice" is not so much Thomas Mann himself, but rather a combination of the two. It is said that he discovered his homosexuality by listening to Mahler's "Fifth Symphony". In Mann's novel, Ashenbach has the same name "Gustav" as Mahler, and he looks like Mr. Weak wearing oval-rimmed glasses.
Sixty years later, the openly gay director Visconti wrote and directed this tragic novel of the same name. A middle-aged composer fell in love with a beautiful boy. In order to see him more, he finally lost his life in Venice. When adapting the original work, Visconti restored the assumption that the protagonist Gustav Aschenbach was a composer rather than a writer.
The composer Gustav Aschenbach, who is over half a hundred years old, came to Venice for tourism in order to relieve the pain of bereavement and career frustration. He took a gondola unique to Venice and went to the steamboat dock, but the boatman violated In accordance with his wishes, he drove to the beach. Ashenbach felt that something was wrong, the panic of being approached by the god of death had caught up with him long before he realized the truth.
The dark hull is like a coffin, carrying him to his beloved and destiny. In the Lido Hotel in Venice where he was staying, Ashenbach met Tazio, a young man with curly hair who looked like an ancient Greek sculpture. At a glance, the unattainable beauty and the perpetual confusion of art haunt Ashenbach like a ghost.
The middle-aged composer started his trailing journey trembling like a crushed girl.
In the restaurant, he ordered fish and soup, pretending to read the newspaper and peeked at him. The silent boy is more like a sculpture. He only needs to be watched and appreciated. He boldly glanced at Tazio. He has thick golden curly hair, and the complexion on his face is as white as carved ivory. Lawrence, the film historian, even commented in his study "The Great Romantic Movie" that some photos of Byrne (the actor of Tazio) in the film "can be extracted from the frame and hung in the Louvre. Palace or the wall of the Vatican." He was no longer content to get close to the boy in accordance with routine and occasional opportunities. He started following him, chasing him everywhere. In Tazio's family, the role of the father is absent, and the mother and sisters are like nuns.
On the beach, people are setting up their lounge chairs, bathing in the warm orange sun of Venice, the sky is pink and the sea is shimmering. The boy was dragged by his companions to have fun, he ran to the sea and chased him freely. His torso was thin and not fleshy, and his ribs were faintly exposed. When he walked in a little bit, he could see the golden hairs on his spine. The vendors yelled for fresh lemons and strawberries. The wives were bargaining for the jewellery. Someone warned that the vendors offered three times the original price. Gustav was outside the crowd, and no one noticed his turbulent heart. He, a calm observer, a voyeur, acts as a camera. The sun shines brightly, dazzling people's eyes, it confuses reason and memory, it makes people's soul blindly pursue happiness and forget about it, and it is persistently attached to the most beautiful things it shines. He is immersed in daydreaming, just like a lover in love, without embarrassment and without blushing to do the most absurd things.
When he saw a teenager kissing his body with the same ability, he should suffer more in his heart. For such feelings, he certainly condemned himself, he would kiss his daughter's photo. He packed his bags and fled in a hurry, ready to return to Munich. When the waiter said that time was pressing and the motorboat was already waiting, he became angry again, saying that as soon as the bill was settled, the restaurant would drive people away, and people's subconscious emotions could not be hidden. At the station, someone told him that his luggage was accidentally sent to Lake Kemu and could not get on the train to Munich. After he was angry and accepted the fact that he could not go, he turned out to be ecstatic and smiled without hiding the corners of his mouth, afraid of being caught. People find abnormalities and look around. Of course he didn't want to leave, Venice had his love, but in the next second, a plague-stricken man faced him and slowly fell, like death ringing an alarm bell in his ears.
At a dinner party, rap artists held the accordion in an attempt to use joyous music to conceal the decadence of Venice captured by the plague. The nobles enjoyed the time. Only Ashenbach could smell the disinfectant on the clown. He asked the clown with white face and sweating, and the clown had bad intentions and hid the facts. The fact is that the government is trying to keep Venice. The tourism industry is trying to block and hide news of the plague. During the day, he plucked up the courage and walked to the boy's mother and asked them to leave the city. For the first time, he stretched out his trembling hand and touched the boy's honey-colored curly hair. In a high fever, I dreamed that he and his mother were about to leave. They shuttled through the dilapidated, dirty, dark and deserted alleys of Venice. He followed all the way, and Tazio was not willing to look back frequently. There was no dialogue between them.
His imagination and obsession with teenagers are almost crazy. Like any courting person, he is bent on winning the favor of the other person. He is dressed in a white suit, trying to change the pattern in the subtle details, wearing a flower, so that he can be rejuvenated. Baking oil, shaving, applying cream and lipstick are like a lengthy ritual. "Now you young can fall in love." The barbershop said to him. And this scene is very much like the grooming of the ascension. And before, he hated the old man with powder on the ship.
"You are not allowed to smile like this, you are not allowed to smile like this to anyone," he muttered to himself. Finally, on the beach, he watched the boy being overwhelmed by his same-sex companions. He was helpless. The terrible plague captured him. The concoction of hair dyed slowly poured down his forehead. Like Venice, his mechanism had long been corrupted and hidden from the world. His heart collapsed until the last moment of death.
People always marvel at the amazing beauty of the young Tazio actor, and I think the most touching thing is indeed the holy love of Gustav. Juvenile love in ancient Greek mythology is not uncommon. Hercules killed Xulas’s father during a dispute and took Xulas who was still a baby. Hercules became Xulas’s father. The adoptive father raised him personally, cultivated him meticulously, and taught him all the skills he should learn to become a hero. After Xu Las became a beautiful teenager, the two became lovers again. Zeus, who always likes to be a beast and mate with a girl woman, loves only a young man. He turns into an eagle and takes Ganymedes to Olympus, where he becomes his sommelier.
And Yacintos, who was loved by Apollo, one day they rubbed the oil together, and when they threw the discus, they also loved Yacintos, because the jealous Westwind god Zephyros messed up and broke his head. Apollo was so sad that he turned the blood dripping on the grass into hyacinths.
The speechless Tazio is transformed into an image of eternal beauty in the film. Only a noble person like Gustav, when he sees a god-like appearance and a perfect body, will he be sincere and fearful. Reverent infatuation. "The courting person is more sacred than the loved one, because God is with the courting person, not with the loved one." Socrates and Fideras discussed the ideal form of love and concluded that it is Between men and boys. The essence of ancient Greek gods is not moral, but aesthetic. Tazio is like the Eros (Cupid) holding a bow and arrow. He is the physical and spiritual origin of the love of the young in ancient Greece. Ibikos praised this in a poem: "Eros stared at me lazily again, but the most charming under the dark eyes, I fell into the inextricable net of Eros." Just as Tazi Ao unintentionally, silent but affectionately staring, caught the poor old man Ashenbach.
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