Visconti takes the veneer and calls it furniture. With infinite tedium, he pores over every facet of Tadzio's Botticelli visage.

Visconti's mastery of visual style almost succeeds in creating the very ideas and feelings that his heavy-handed narrative entirely misses.

Instead of bringing the story to life, Visconti has, I'm afraid, embalmed it.

“Death in Venice” is a film about humanity’s slow transcendence into nothingness and everything. It exists in the space between life and death, between youth and old age, between ignorance and wisdom.