The description of the Criterion Collection DVD reads 'the film recreates, with nostalgia, drama, and opulence, the tumultuous years when the aristocracy lost its grip and the middle classes rose and formed a unified, democratic Italy. Burt Lancaster stars as the aging prince watching his culture and fortune wane in the face of a new generation, represented by his upstart nephew (Alain Delon) and his beautiful fiancée (Claudia Cardinale).' But the prince, of whom Burt Lancaster brilliantly rendered the role, treats the passage of the values and things he holds dear as natural as the season changes throughout the year.
Mr. Chou represented an era where even the worst possible taste of an aristocracy, represented by as strangely as a golden Rolls Royce, is graceful and admirable, and of dignity, totally differentiable from the deeds of the parvenus of our days. It would be sad, for anyone who is temperamentally close to these people of who Mr. Chou was one, to see the past of such an era, very much the same of those who lived through the First World War to see the Belle Epoque falter. However, as Burt Lancaster in The Leopard, it is inevitable, for only when Belle Epoque went away could the Art Deco be born out of the dissatisfaction of people to a tasteless, miserable life after the war.
The only difference in our times, perhaps, is we do not have such group of dissatisfied people. The people here love the tasteless, miserable life and are more than willing to sacrifice one's dignity and taste for endless misery of TV mini series, paparazzi, low-class information and following those whom they once despised but who become louder and wealthier though intellectually remain hallow. What a shame! We shall see no Art Deco, no Nature Naturing, no To Be Human.
No comments:
Post a Comment