The Most Beautiful Boy in the World

This film could have been a true gem. Sadly, the fascinating background story of Luchino Visconti's "Death in Venice" quickly dissolves into a diluted, weird, shallow and to be honest simply boring exploration of what happened to the most beautiful boy in the world (without at all creating an in-depth portrait). All of the most interesting moments and crucial story parts were actually in the trailer which is great, but there's not much more to this film than the trailer.

Did anyone else feel really uncomfortable with the way the filmmakers handled Bjorn reading the details surrounding his mother's death?

It's clearly a very traumatic experience for him, and quite right too, but the film makers refuse to cut away, keeping the camera rolling as it edges closer and closer to Bjorn's face.

Now maybe Bjorn requested that they don't shy away from capturing that moment, but it just didn't sit well with me. Particularly from a film whose key angle is the exploration of Bjorn's potential exploitation as a child. Can you really cry "exploitation" whilst being exploitative?

This is a fascinating documentary, particularly for anyone who knows Luchino Visconti's Death in Venice and is therefore already acquainted with the haunting beauty of the young Bjorn Andresen, who played Tadzio. The Most Beautiful Boy in the World is sumptuously photographed and deftly edited to create a legend around Andresen's main claim to fame - and therein lies the problem. It gradually becomes apparent that the producer-directors of this doco are hellbent on the main narrative being that of a beautiful innocent corrupted and all but destroyed by his youthful brush with movie fame. While nobody ever explicitly speaks in terms of a Death in Venice curse, it's very much implied in the shots of an aged and frail Andresen gazing along the same beach where his younger, more carefree self frolicked while making the film; and in the all-to-clear parallels between the lost, lonely old Andresen and Dirk Bogarde's pathetic, crumbling Aschenbach. What's troubling is that the documentary makers are quite clearly determined not to allow too many facts to get in the way of their myth-making. The emphasis is all on instant fame and the pressures of being labelled "The Most Beautiful Boy in the World" leading to Andresen having a deeply troubled life. In fact, this is 90% of the film, with stern fingers pointed at Andresen's fame-obsessed grandmother and some sly, not-entirely-justified jabs at Visconti for their parts in exploiting the boy. There's much less examination of Andresen dealing with a mentally unstable mother, his mother's grisly death when he was still a child, his loss of his own child to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome or his struggles as a husband and father. All of these likely had a bigger impact on Andresen's life than briefly being a poster boy for youthful beauty, and they can't all be conveniently traced directly to his Death in Venice experience. The filmmakers also curiously omit any mention of Andresen actually having a fairly extensive film and TV career after Death in Venice, leaving the false impression that playing Tadzio not only led nowhere, but more or less destroyed him. Frankly, by the end of this weirdly deceitful exercise I formed the impression that Bjorn Andresen has been more egregiously wronged by The Most Beautiful Boy in the World than he ever was by Death in Venice.

Greetings again from the darkness. In 1971, renowned Italian film director Luchino Visconti announced he had cast "the most beautiful boy in the world" as Tadzio in his new film, DEATH IN VENICE. Co-directors Kristina Lindstrom and Kristian Petri document the story of how Bjorn Andresen's life took him from beautiful to broken. It's a tragic tale of how adults wrecked a young man's shot at happiness.

The directors do not shy away from showing both sides of Bjorn - then and now. Clips from his audition for Visconti include a creepy photo shoot where 15 year old Bjorn is asked to bare his torso. Two things are clear: the youngster is quite uncomfortable, and he's truly beautiful by most anyone's standards (except for the "Eye of the Beholder" episode of The Twilight Zone). Modern day Bjorn sports the scars of life. Deep facial wrinkles are the price of decades of smoking cigarettes. A long gray mane of hair punctuated with heavy facial hire help hide what was once a beautiful boy from the world.

When we first meet Bjorn, he's living in a filthy (truly disgusting) apartment and facing eviction. His girlfriend Jessica helps him clean the place, preventing him from having to move from his home of many years. Over the course of the documentary, we hear from Bjorn's sister, a friend of his mothers, his Governess, Casting Director Margareta Krantz, and Bjorn's daughter Robine. We learn of many tragic experiences Bjorn endured. These include his mother, an unknown father, his misguided Granny, and his 10 month old son. Beyond all of these unfortunate elements, we simply can't shake the creepiness of Bjorn's first meeting with director Visconti.

Exploitation is the best word I can come up with - not just for the audition and photo shoot, but also the subsequent marketing appearances at film festivals. DEATH IN VENICE (based on the Thomas Mann novel) has long been entrenched in gay cinema lore, and in the movie, Tadzio (played by Bjorn) is the object of an older man's desire. Knowing what we do of Visconti, and seeing what we do in the audition clips, our mind goes places we would rather it not.

Bjorn Andresen is an unusual subject to choose for a documentary, and not much time is spent on the adult life of the now 66 year old man. Connecting the dots of the tragedies in his life makes his current situation understandable, but this is a man who has taught music and continued to periodically act ... he has a memorable scene in the recent MIDSOMMAR (2019), yet his demeanor and physical appearance leave us seeing a shell of a man. This is certainly not an uplifting profile, but the cautionary tales are plentiful.

In theaters September 24, 2021.

Intriguing story, good cinematography but the overall story felt incomplete at times.

Maybe it was the run time that didn't do it for me, 92 min felt too much for this kind of story and what the creators were trying to say, maybe it's the fact that I personally prefer documentaries with more of a "did he or did he not" feeling in their storytelling.

Maybe that's just me.

Never mind besides my review I really hope the protagonist of the documentary finds his inner peace eventually, he seams like a genuinely good guy.