'Death in Venice' connection?
I saw another post on this subject, but I am intrigued enough to write another one.
This movie is a moving modern-day retelling of a short story by Thomas Mann, "Death in Venice." In that story, a circumspect, spartan, newly-widowed scholar, who has lived his entire life in the realm of books and ideas, suddenly finds himself middle aged, freaks out, and goes on a vacation to Venice to try to figure things out. There, he sees this young boy named Tadzio and absolutely flips over him. He becomes obsessed with Tadzio, although he never speaks to or touches him. At the end, he succumbs to a plague of influenza that is plaguing Venice at the time and dies alone on the shore, looking at Tadzio play in the water.
Mann wrote this story in the early 20th century. Many argue quite fiercely that there was nothing gay about the older man losing his marbles over the boy, that the situation was a representation of a deprived soul looking for beauty in the world. I, myself, think that explanation is only partially correct. The longing for lost beauty is part of what is going on, but, hey, the situation is what it is.
And so it is in this film, "Love and Death on Long Island." John Hurt finds himself in the same life circumstances as does the man in "Death in Venice." But this story took place at the end of the 20th century, not the beginning, and a lot had changed. It would not have made sense for him to pine away for his subject without reaching out to him on a personal level. So, the boy character becomes a young man, the aspiring actor played by Jason Priestly, and John H. can pursue him at will.
In "Death in Venice," the man and the boy seem to connect at the end by looking at each other, the boy seeming to point at him. In this film, the characters connect at the end when the younger man pats the older on the shoulder. Both gestures are the same: the connection of the old and the young, in a gay framework, a deeply emotional interaction that is not overtly sexual but bristles with sex under the surface.
The older man in "Death in Venice" dies at the end because for such a story at that time it was a great artistic flourish. In 1997, there was no need for John Hurt to die -- in fact, that would have seemed pretty stupid. So they just changed his name to "DeAth" and that was that, topic covered.
I love how "Love and Death on Long Island" retells "Death in Venice" in a manner that is much lighter in its approach even if the themes are just as heavy.
Does anyone else see this "Death in Venice" connection? I described it here because in the other post I think the author assumed everyone knew what "Death in Venice" was and I don't think everyone does.