And now we are going to discuss Casanova (the 2005 Heath Ledger theatrical release) and Casanova (the 2005 David Tennant Masterpiece Theatre two-parter).
First of all, the fact that Ledger's Casanova barely flickered onto the movie screens of our nation before dying like a consumptive Camille is absolute proof that something has gone deeply wrong with the world. This was a delightful, life-affirming, poignant, humorous romp whose only problem was that it had about three too many false endings.
The BBC Casanova, which was a huge success, gave us a delightful, poignant, humorous (I'm not entirely sure I'd go so far as to say life-affirming, but close) romp in the first part...then, like some vengeful 1930s woman's film, punished us for it in the second. And not even in a fun way.
What did the BBC Casanova do...okay, wait a minute, not everybody might have seen this. So: SPOILER ALERT! If you've already seen both of these works (and I do hope you have), or you don't care, follow me over the jump.
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Okay. Onward.
As I was saying...WHAT DID THE BBC CASANOVA DO to deserve that PSYCHO of a son they saddled him with? Seriously. Don't talk to me about how "he didn't pay enough attention blah blah blah." This was not some suburban middle manager of the 20th century whose wife has explained Family Systems Theory to him. We SAW Casanova's own childhood. His mother treated him hatefully and with contempt before she abandoned him to that nightmarish school. Casanova was an exponentially better parent to his child than his own mother was to him--and under circumstances every bit as dangerous and precarious as what she faced, if not more so. I found it borderline offensive that Rocco was constantly badgering Casanova to pay more attention to his son when, in fact, Casanova paid infinitely more (and infinitely kinder) attention to his son than his own mother ever paid to him. Was it selfish attention? Absolutely. What do you expect? What other kind of attention is an emotionally-raped survivor like that ever going to have? At least he did it, when he knew perfectly well that he could ship the kid off just like he himself was shipped off. The fact is, Casanova took a long step towards breaking the patterns he grew up with. That's the best anyone can do. He did not deserve to be cosmically punished for it by the story he was in.
But maybe that's exactly the problem. Maybe it was his own tragic, inevitably incomplete effort to do the right thing that so enraged the Television Gods.
There's a nihilism to current television writing where, very often, well-intentioned people end up creating all the problems while coldblooded assholes...well, do a lot of damage, but less than they otherwise would have If It Hadn't Been For Those Meddling Kids trying to (snort!) fix it. This is ambition daring to flatter itself. The gods of television threw Casanova under the bus. Never mind that, as played, he clearly meant no harm, and whenever he realized he WAS (usually inadvertently) doing harm, he apologized and tried to fix it (that being the best any human being can ever do). No, we're going to have his son turn out evil, his ex-lover turn out worse, and suggest that he--despite or perhaps because of the fact that he's horrified by all this--is to blame.
I think somebody, somewhere in all this, is trying to punish their own parents. Maybe it's the medium itself, enraged at the older forms that gave it life.
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But all these immense cosmic downers are just in Part 2. Part 1 is a kaleidoscope of super-saturated colors, juicy grins and happy pirate sex, god love it, with a sweet ache at the core. Yes, Part 1 of the Beeb Casanova plus the entire thing of Ledger's criminally underappreciated theatrical Casanova makes the perfect evening's entertainment. A suitably tender blow for happiness, not despite, but because of the state the world has always been in.
