lust for knowledge

Did you know the eccentric Mr. Emersons in "ARWAView" are an allusion to Ralph Waldo Emerson's philosophy?

Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882

Have you noticed how romantic novelist Eleanor Lavish was modelled on Emily Spender (1841-1922) -an actual Edwardian suffragette writer E.M.Forster didn't take very seriously as an author?

Even the title of "Under a Loggia" by Eleanor Lavish is a parody of "Until the day breaks", by Emily Spender. Wicked, wicked E.M.Forster...

Everyone who's watched a cult movie way too many times starts finding unexpected connections between fact and fiction, past and present or Art and Life... After you've delighted in the same film for about three or four times, your mind starts craving for MORE! When I say more I don't mean a second part, or a prequel, or even a spin-off. I'm talking about a head-to-toe, vivid immersion in the characters' own world. 

Unfortunately, most cult movies can't make such experience possible. Try to jump head first into The Rocky Horror Picture Show's shallow waters and you may risk breaking your neck, almost literally. However, films like "ARWAView" seem to provide an endless depth of cultural reference to dive into. You only have to take down all the books the characters mention or quote from, to get a list of reading material long enough for a lifetime of research. Here are a few of them:

- Commedia, by Dante Alighieri

- I Promessi Sposi, by Alessandro Manzoni

- The World as Will and Representation, by Arthur Schopenhauer

- Walden, by Henry David Thoreau

- The Way of All Flesh, by Samuel Butler

- A Shropshire Lad, by A.E.Housman

- Any of Friedrich Nietzsche's works

Reading just one of these books may lead a curious mind into other topics, which in their turn may open an appetite for yet more books -just the way a little brook can push a nutshell into a bigger river before it meets the sea. Take me, for instance. Ever since I discovered the wretched movie thirty years ago, I've come to learn about E.M.Forster's universe, but also about Fabian Socialism, Walt Whitman's Body Electric, Edward Carpenter's alternative lifestyle, John Ruskin's Mornings in Florence, Luigi Pirandello's Mattia Pascale or Bloomsbury's own sexual revolution -among other topics. 

And the same applies to Painting and Music. If you are willing to let it happen, "ARWAView" can take your imagination on a trip from Giotto's frescoes to Leonardo's Madonnas through Paolo Uccello's "Battle of San Romano", while you get inadvertently acquainted with some of Beethoven's piano music as well as two of Giacomo Puccini's most heart-rending operas -"Gianni Schicchi" and "La Rondine".

"Battle of San Romano", by Paolo Uccello

Who said watching movies makes kids dumb, lazy and easy to manipulate? Like a College degree in Humanities, "ARWAView" teaches us Literature, History, Art, Philosophy, Politics... you name it. James Ivory's most popular motion picture can trigger in us an insatiable lust for knowledge, plus a much better understanding of the world we live in. 

I'll say no more. I'd rather leave to you the enviable pleasure of putting together all the precious little pieces in this most fascinating of frescoes ever displayed on a movie screen. 

telling right from wrong

Ever since Nietzsche announced God's Death in the late XIXth century, Westerners seem to have been drifting about like orphans in a storm -as Evelyn Waugh would say.

The world has gone mad today,

and good's bad today,

and black's white today,

and day's night today...

"Paths of Glory" (1957), by Stanley Kubrik

Yes, the song is Anything Goes (Cole Porter, 1934). Before the First World War, back when the Church would tell us exactly what to do, it was fairly easy to tell Right from Wrong. About a hundred years later, the boundaries between them are not quite as sharp.

As opposed to people in the Belle Epoque, too many of us today feel we've been let down by our seniors' creeds and confessions, as they seem to be incompatible with our new views on individual freedom. However, our basically secular world still craves for some sort of moral compass. And this is exactly the perfect context for the advent of a most peculiar phenomenon -known as the cult movie.

"A Room With a View" (1985)... What else?

A cult movie doesn't necessarily have to be an excellent one, technically speaking -though many times it is. "ARWAView", for instance, is both a cult movie AND a work of Art, but this isn't always the case. I wouldn't exactly label "Enchanted April" as a well crafted motion picture... in spite of its many charms.

Enchanted April (1991), by Mike Newell

No. I'm afraid international film festival awards have little to do with public devotion. I dare say a film becomes cult when viewers go back to see it again and again, in an irrational search for answers to Life's Biggest Questions.

Original Artwork by Roman Preneste, 2012

But watch out. No matter how true some dialogues can ring in your ears, they may be culturally conditioned or even biased. In a previous entry called A BETTER SONG TO SING, we saw how certain messages -say, in "Mamma Mia" or "Shirley Valentine"- can easily turn you into Ryanair's favourite customer of the year. But there are other, more subtle ways to manipulate you.

Mamma Mia, 2008

There is evidence for the assertion above in "Tea with Mussolini". In this gorgeous production by Franco Zeffirelli, neglected seven-year-old Luca suffers from his philandering Catholic father's lack of responsibility. It is only through the kindness and moral superiority of a completely unemotional English Protestant lady that the kid gets familiar with Shakespeare's plays to learn the difference between Right and Wrong. In so doing, Luca gets a complete humanistic education and grows into a sound young man of action, as well as a world-famous opera stage designer. In fact, the movie contains lots of biographical information about Zeffirelli's own childhood in thirties' Florence. But this is besides the point.

"Tea with Mussolini", 1999

My Anglophile friend Richi never liked "Tea with Musso..." or any film alike. As she said once to me:

- I can't take any more of these patronizing stories about Anglos teaching everybody how to lead their lives!

- Any particularly loathsome screenplay in mind? -I replied, expecting her to come up with another of my all-time favourites.

- Yes, there is one I can't get over... What is that one about Jaipur called?

- Oh. Surely you don't mean "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel"?

- Right! Exactly!! -she frantically nodded- Can you believe that postcolonial dog? -she almost screamed, getting slightly carried away- I mean, do the English still expect the rest of the world to sit in the dark for two hours to watch these geriatric crones coach a totally moronic Indian hotel manager till both his love-life and his business take off? Come on! I'm sure many Indians must have found the movie offensive.

-Excuse me? Maggie Smith and Judi Dench are far from being "crones"!!

Much as I enjoyed "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel", I have to admit Richi made a good point. It doesn't look pretty when an adult from one culture treats an adult in another culture like a child, whether this exchange takes place between Brits and Indians, Brits and Italians or Brits and Spaniards (see "Fawlty Towers" for references).

"Fawlty Towers" (1975-1979). Spanish waiter Manuel never fails to bring the worst out of Basil...

Mind you, I never resented my intensive and extensive exposure to Anglo ways and ideas. On the contrary. Like little orphan Luca, I've also been helped out of storms by English-speaking friends from every corner of the former Commonwealth. The English-speaking mind provides a clear, insightful perspective on things that's rare to find along the Mediterranean. And I believe its influence has made me better in every sense of the word. 

a better song to sing

Apparently, many cities and municipalities in Tuscany have come up with a new tourist tax. Which means that travelling around Lucca, Siena, Pienza or San Gimignano is now more expensive than ever before.

What is the world coming to? Miss Charlotte Bartlett would tear her robes at this appalling outrage! As for me, I understand Tuscans to a point. If I was a resident in any of those gorgeous places, I wouldn't like to see my own small hometown constantly taken over by swarms of intruders armed with selfie sticks. As an attempt to put a limit to this, I guess the new tax is a sensible step -probably into a heartless, much colder world where only money seems to count, but a sensible step if there is one. 

We all know massive tourism is a curse, in spite of which we still go touring, don't we? Well, I hate to say it, but I partially blame the film industry for the inordinate amount of tourists that plague Southern Europe to the point of spoiling all its charm. 

Just an example of what a certain type of British tourists do when they go on holidays in Spain.

As I wrote on A MOVIE THERAPY, motion pictures tell us how to feel -and even what to think. If you are familiar with feel-good stories about Italy made in the 1980s and 1990s, you must have heard calls in your head such as: find out who you really are; follow your heart where it takes you; eat, pray, love and find a better song to sing... for you are ENTITLED to your own special share of happiness in your lifetime -or rather, what's left of it. Come on. YOU deserve it. 

Shirley Valentine always KNEW she could do better...

Now. When you think all these New Age slogans were thrown at you in inseparable association with beautiful Tuscan landscapes and Puccini arias it isn't hard to figure out why, thirty years later, so many Western citizens in the grip of a mid-life crisis still run to the nearest airport for the first plane to Florence, Majorca or Santorini. One should think such general quest for self-discovery would have led to some Universal Spring of Endless Harmony in the world. Instead, it's proved to be the best way to turn many individual dreams into a collective nightmare. To rephrase one of Willy Russell's most memorable lines in "Educating Rita", yes, we did find a better song to sing. But when we all sing it simultaneously, the result is shrill, hollow and tuneless. Sorry for the misquotation, Mr. Russell.

Rita, like Shirley, DESERVES to be happy! You see, YOU DESERVE TO BE HAPPY TOO!

I can almost hear you say, "But E.M.Forster, Elizabeth Barrett-Browning and W. Shakespeare can't be all wrong! They must have meant well when they wrote their stories!"

Elizabeth Barrett-Browning's tomb in Florence

Most definitely, I believe they did mean well. Maybe it's us who didn't get the message right. You see, these tales can't be taken literally because they belong in the realm of Myth. Far from being an actual physical place, the Italy they describe is an ideal. And you don't fly Easyjet to your ideals... or do you?

Endearing character Pamela Piggott saw this clearly in Billy Wilder's acclaimed "Avanti!" when she said something like

Italy is not a place, it is a State of the Mind...

Jack Lemmon and Juliet Mills in "Avanti!" (1971)

A peaceful, blissful Italy of perfect Truth, Love and Beauty lives at the heart of all human dreams since the beginning of time, long before the real Italy materialized. You can find that special Garden of Saint Mark's within yourself, then make it grow and even share it. Touring, though, won't get you any nearer to it than you are now. 

Like dear old Mr. Emerson in "A Room with a View", you too can take a fork to your heart at the dining table to proclaim: 

I don't need a view! It is in here that the sun shines! It is in here that birds sing!

Unforgettable Denholm Elliot in "A Room with a View" (1985)

Who needs to pay extra for a Tuscan view anymore? Shouldn't all dreams be free? Haven't they always been?