What could one say about Venice that has not been said a thousand times over already ? Well note to self only : I have been to Venice, been there, done it. There is always this obligatory feeling that you Have to go to Venice at least once in your life. And you do have to indeed, it is overwhelmingly beautiful. Unique and fragile. It is an experience. aesthetic and intellectually so very stimulating (overflow of architecture, art and history...) Yet, yet...I 'experienced' Venice in all its beauty and glory but loved it ?? In retrospect curiously yes I do. But when there, I felt I was seeing a very dainty, beautiful aristocratic timeless Lady who had sold her soul to the most vulgar passer-by...To please the crowds and only the crowds what has Venice not done... It is a waste of time to lament the ugliness of tourism when one is precisely part of it (though in january to avoid the worst effects) but still...like seeing grotesque scars on a pale and delicate face...
And then the claustrophobia ! Curiously nothing had prepared me for the labyrinthical maze of tiny lanes that really is Venice away from the canals ! To reach the open space of a small place was like breathing again ! I hated the opression of the walls closing on you from all sides, high walls baring the light...It spoke to me of narrowness, of opression, of fear, of alienation, of rejection. A city afloat closed onto itself, rejecting the world, the foreigners, the light as far as it could.
But the Grand Canal of course...a beauty to behold...The opposite of the narrow lanes...I went to Venice in my mind so often, as in the vision of 'Palace of dreams' that somehow seeing Venice is never totally new. Everyone carries an 'inner' Venice. And the real place strangely corroborates the vision...
I saw 'Death in Venice' perhaps six, seven times all through my life. To me that film really IS Venice. I recognise the litle place with the well where Aschenbach collapses towards the end. It was odd and striking, encountering in reality this place so well-known in my mind...
'Death in Venice' totally captures the essence of this doomed city. Beauty from afar, impossible adoration and the pestilence, Death...To me it will always be the soul of Venice more than any other films shot there.
Then from the plane, ascending in the sky I got a glimpse of the city far below, lost, tiny, floating on the vast sea, the Lido a miniature stretch of earth. It was a poignant feeling, thinking of all the millions of treasures of art and architecture delicately poised there, utterly at the mercy of time and waters...
