Farewell, world, I’m off to see Luca Guadagnino

In Venice, the spotlight is on Luca Guadagnino and his “Joie de vivre. Notes, thoughts, words, reflections, faces and visions on Bernardo Bertolucci and 20th-century cinephilia that no longer exists”, a seven-and-a-half-hour documentary, a quarter of an hour of which is taken up just reading the title. The first screening is scheduled for nine o’clock in the morning: those staying off the Lido are forced to set their alarms in the middle of the night to catch the boat to the Sala Casinò. As the sun begins to rise from the sea and warm the square in front of the Palazzo del Cinema, the intrepid audience members start trickling into the cinema in question – among them yours truly, fresh from a night out at parties and with just two hours’ sleep under my belt. How does one prepare for such a long screening? How much coffee? Fortunately, basic human rights aren’t denied, and it’s permitted to bring comfort items and essentials into the auditorium. Some audience members are well-equipped: as well as water and something to eat, they’ve also brought a pressure-relief cushion, a travel neck pillow (in case you doze off), and rehydration salts; many have even had a catheter fitted. Being absent from life for nearly eight hours—and, what’s more, entering a cinema where one must sit still with the lights off—is a near-death experience that makes this screening an interesting experiment: there are also two NASA scientists present in the cinema to study the effects on the human body of such prolonged inactivity and exposure to darkness. Some audience members embrace their relatives one last time before entering the theatre; a rather elderly lady from Venice confides in me that she made her will the day before because ‘at this age, I can’t be so sure I’ll live to see the end of the film’. Before the curtains are drawn and the lights go out, the audience catches a glimpse of the crew from Chi l’ha visto? taking up position outside the Casino to capture, in seven and a half hours’ time, the moment when those who have been reported missing by their loved ones will be found by the RaiTre programme as they emerge from the cinema. Right on time, at nine o’clock the film begins – as does the air conditioning – and the experience – already pushing the limits in itself – reaches hallucinatory levels: the temperature in the auditorium drops by about 87 degrees, and an arctic blast descends upon us, the audience watching Guadagnino. Within minutes, the Sala Casinò becomes a blast chiller: it halts the proliferation of our bacteria (whilst keeping our freshness, our colours and our scents intact) and puts our metabolism into hibernation; in doing so, the screening will return us to the world exactly as we had left it eight hours earlier. But then the unimaginable happens: three and a half hours later, the words ‘End of Part One’ appear on the big screen; and the lights in the auditorium come back on. What about the second part? Tomorrow, again at nine in the morning. Such a decision, however, risks undermining the emotional continuity of the experience—not to mention the logistical implications for viewers who, like hostages in a cinematic kidnapping, have already invested hours in the narrative. As Fellini might have observed, an emotion of this intensity should not be interrupted without some form of compensatory gesture. Moreover, scheduling a seven-and-a-half-hour documentary and then withholding its conclusion betrays a lack of courage—or, as some might argue, a failure of radical commitment—to present the work in its entirety. Moreover, those who have seen the first part cannot attend the second: it is well known that once a body has been thawed, it cannot be refrozen. It is a pity, because this documentary by Guadagnino on Bertolucci is truly beautiful.