Ludwig (1973)

This film follows the "mad" king Ludwig's arc from the naive belief that everyone can understand the beauty of art, to his withdrawal from what he perceives as lowly politics, to his efforts to surround himself with people who will indulge his desires.  This last effort is not just Ludwig's effort to satisfy himself, but to be free from people he believes want to humiliate him.  

It's not clear how much this behavior actually matters for the sound governance of Bavaria.  At some point, Otto von Bismarck's name is mentioned, and while he never appears in the film, it's clear that his authority is far more relevant than Ludwig's.  Many besides Ludwig are trying to govern while he withdraws.

Different events of the story are introduced in flash-forwards to a government inquest into whether the king is mentally fit to rule, with officials, doctors, and other witnesses providing their opinions about what we are about to see.  Ludwig's character is not the only thing the film wants to show us: there is also the shrewdness of other people in government who constantly complain about the king's indolence and eventually have him declared insane.  

The film plays out as a struggle between men of realpolitik and the king, with his artistic and spiritual inclinations.  The things the cabinet ministers despise are things we now remember as extremely significant elements of culture.  At the inquest, a cabinet minister speaks derisively of the king's interest in befriending Richard Wagner, declaring Wagner a frivolous "profiteer."   

Wagner is frivolous, constantly dodging his creditors, but he does care for his art and for Ludwig as well.  We see him rolling around on the floor with his dog.  He pays no mind to the expenses or other wastes that attend his projects, but apparently not with the malice the government officials attribute to him.  He seems happier than the other characters, but in a way made superficial by his reliance on Ludwig.  Ludwig is never able to achieve that himself, though his attempts are increasingly grandiose.   

The film is only suggestive about his sexuality at first.  He cancels his wedding to the duchess Sophie.  He begs for God's help after a highly aestheticized encounter with an attractive young servant of his, whom he discovers swimming naked at dusk.  He invites a servant of similar physical appearance to stay with him in isolation.  The suggestiveness ends rather abruptly after Ludwig is told by a priestly adviser that he must not act too inappropriately for his station, or else people will hate him for being "different."  In the next scene, he kisses a man.  What, after all, is the point in keeping things suggestive once it's clear that everyone knows and they still hate you for it?  

He is expected to rule responsibly over people he is told will hate him.  This is unfair, but as Colonel Dürckheim, one of his few true friends in the film, points out to him, it's also deeply unfair that Ludwig has immensely more power than the commoners.  

Dürckheim warns Ludwig of the effects such privilege will have on his attempts to live an ideal life.  True to his words, Ludwig discovers absurdities.  He is told to rule over his subjects by submitting to their prejudices.  The cabinet members take advantage of turn-of-the-century medical science to take Ludwig down, attacking his desire to focus on music and architecture over politics; at the same time, politics in this film clearly depends on a great deal of aesthetics and ritual.  

These absurdities lead up to the film's dragged-out, anticlimactic ending.  It creates a simmering, sustained sense of tragedy throughout its final movement.  I haven't experienced anything quite like it in another film.  Ludwig is deprived first of everything he took pleasure in, then of the dignity of being taken seriously, and, finally, even of the right to stop pretending his situation isn't absurd.  

It's also very easy to see this film as partly autobiographical for Luchino Visconti.  He was a communist, a gay man, a Catholic, an aristocrat, and an artist.  Aside from the first, these are all roles he shared with this film's King Ludwig.  They're roles it could be tricky to occupy all at once.  But unlike Ludwig he gets to be frank about the absurdity.

Another tragedy also takes place in this film, though more subtly.  Empress Elisabeth of Austria tells Ludwig that people rarely remember monarchs.  Of everything depicted in this film, Wagner's music and the architecture of Ludwig's castles stand out as things we remember today; but their contemporaries see them as wasteful and pointless.  And if we reflect on Dürckheim's advice to Ludwig, the film reminds us that the vast majority of people who lived at any time are not remembered at all.  In the present, we may think it was inevitable something or someone would be remembered.  But in this film, things we recognize and remember are not appreciated, and their likelihood of being remembered seems precarious.  Maybe history is just another instrumental, aesthetic exercise, like the other noble pageantry in this film.