This is a classy movie!!!
I saw it by chance nearly 20 years ago & it remains one of my great memories of the cinema!
Back then, I thought this loner was intriguing but nothing more. In this world's terms, he was a loser, a grief-stricken man sending letters to his deceased mother, friend of the postman, lover of fine art! In his eccentric kingdom that the palatial few are privileged to find!
But his complex nature is balanced by the puritanical historical background he is enlivened by, privileged by, but too, imprisoned by! So he sits at his lonely piano in a deserted church of grandeur! Playing his heart out!!!
A perfect Catholic solution by the reckoning of some
without hope of any resolution!!!
It reminds me of a pair of REAL priests! One who liked to use his Sunday sermons for derision & cynical responses! Another who used pillars of the church to distribute confessions of trusting practitioners! When I was a little boy, hearing for the first time of the "Good Samaritan", I couldn't believed that a priest would walk by on the opposite side of the road, to the injured & beaten collapsed man who was cared for by the rich young man & the innkeeper the hero paid for the keep of the downtrodden one!
But there's chambers of music & gardens of intrigue wafting with or without audience here!
The settings & the musical background are most impressive, from the fineries of the outside garden, to the gardens that are revealed to us layer by layer in the relationships of the protagonist to the beautiful female model who undresses for the man of mystery, on appointment, to the crass judgemental nature of her accomplice & lover in his satire of derision. Or even in the art classes where this trio mingles in a volatile atmosphere within seconds! The chemical reaction is furious!
This is NOT a good movie! It is a CLASSIC!!!
Personally, I rate this with "Cinema Paridiso", as one of the finest films ever made!!!
Do NOT miss it!