DEATH IN VENICE

Death in Venice is a novella written by the German author Thomas Mann, first published in 1912 as Der Tod in Venedig.^[1] The work presents a great writer suffering writer's block who visits Venice and is liberated, uplifted, and then increasingly obsessed, by the sight of a stunningly beautiful youth. Though he never speaks to the boy, much less touches him, the writer finds himself drawn deep into ruinous inward passion; meanwhile, Venice, and finally the writer himself, succumb to a cholera plague. The novella is powerfully intertextual, with the chief sources being first the connection of erotic love to philosophical wisdom traced in Plato's Symposium and Phaedrus, and second theNietzschean contrast between the god of restraint and shaping form, Apollo, and the god of excess and passion, Dionysus.

The boy in the story (Tadzio) is based on a boy (Władzio or Tadzio, nicknames for the Polish name Władyslaw or Tadeusz respectively) Mann had seen during a visit to Venice in 1911.

(from weekipedia)

After reading Death in Venice and watched the film at class I would like to do few reflection.

My first opinion of the book is good, because is strange but at the same time interesting. What makes the book interesting is the biography of the author that the book hides. Read this book is a good exercise to invest about the life of the author and also see how it has impact on the book. In a few words: the book shows what the author tries to hide in his real life.

Then, about the film, first of all I want to say that I consider cinema as an art and also a culture on itself. But not all the films have the same characteristics and in consequence they have more or less attractive. When I use attractive I refer to the characteristics that an artwork needs to have: make you feel, make you reflect, make you invest...

So, for me this film is not as attractive as the book is and in consequence I cannot consider the result as art or as culture. 

It's a little big contradictory to say that cinema is an art and a film is not but as I said it deppends on the film, as well as I don't consider all the paitings art, or all the music, or all the books, or all the spots... etc.

What do you think? Am I wrong? Do you agree?

See you!!!