Le toucher silencieux

Take away the somewhat ludicrous deaux ex machina of having a young musicologist worm his way into the household of a genius composer by using a divining rod to locate water under his bedroom, and you still have a ludicrous movie. But I enjoyed it. Why?

As we baby boomers enter our older age, it's comforting to see other old guys and gals making out, without chemical assistance. Lothaire Bluteau plays Tony Perkins' all-angst and sensitivity role quite well as his new young love falls to the old guy's wiles and genius. Power is a sexy aphrodisiac and it doesn't have to come from money, this movie would indicate.

That everyone involves subjugates themselves to the birthing (in this case re-birthing) of genius and theoretically great, timeless works of art may have been true in earlier years, and maybe it's because I don't see this in my get-rich-quick, hedonistic pleasure-now, and only-MY- pleasure-counts, forget-the-planet world that I could not put aside my disbelief. How Sarah Miles could live under the same roof with that egotistical randy old fool is more than I can understand, but then I'm not ethereal. Genius must be served.

And yes, I can appreciate Picasso's Guernivica and still know he was a b....d. I can love Wagner and ignore what ends his music was used for. I just don't want to be personnally involved with such people. But maybe, somebody has to do it, and instead of worshipping Picasson, we should instead worship a concatenated set of people who contributed by their suffering, to his greatness. This movie makes you think about such sacrifices.