Jazz notes and a milestone in cinema
Only a few notes, the first two steps of Adam’s Apple, to find ourselves catapulted back in time, on the eve of one of the last Christmas of the twentieth century.
We were thinking of the combination of the magnificent nectar of Il Cancelliere, thinking back to each and every film we had appreciated, to each admired painting.
The jazz music track that played the background and described the Taurasi to perfection was a guide. One of us, then found himself catapulted into the past, in New York. The big apple, the city that more than any other is at the center of the world.
Then we saw a downtown cafe. Outside the snow and improvised actors played Santa Claus outside the department stores.
Soon after, we see a man, a lonely man, sitting in solitude at a table, with a newspaper in his hand. A little further on, on the small stage of the cafeteria, a friend, a distant acquaintance, a university companion, is playing jazz on the piano.
Finally, everything comes evident. The one who reads the newspaper has a mind full of thoughts: his wife has just confessed that he wanted another man, a sailor from a military ship docked in port about a year before.
The testament of a genius
There had never been anything between the sailor and the woman, but doubts have settled in the mind of those who desperately tried to distract themselves by reading those pages. A self-made-man, a doctor, one of those who could afford a home on the thirtieth floor of a skyscraper right next to Central Park.
An atrocious doubt in the mind of the doctor, Dr. Bill Harford, one who has already thought of his “revenge” against his wife. One night, maybe one night with a prostitute from the center just met, the beautiful Domino.
Meanwhile, the pianist stops and takes a break. Harford, then, recognizes him as Nick Nightingale, a former classmate at the medical school. Harford gets up and approaches him: few memories, then Nick invites him to a mysterious villa outside the city, where strange things happen and where he is invited to play, strictly blindfolded.
The film, at this point, leaves its merely introductory part and opens up sinking in the mystery of the villa and its satanic ritual., Just as our Taurasi, initially closed and collected as a mass still unformed inside the glass, everythingopened wonderfully to our senses.
Curiously, we found a link between sex that acts as a leitmotiv in the film that closes the earthly experience of Stanley Kubrick, the film that we thought of combining with our wine, and the nectar we just tasted.
All in all, sex is the gift that humanity has been given to reproduce. An extremely simple gift that brings life to life through love between two people. Yet, sex is also pleasure. From the initial simplicity of an act that generates, biologically, the lineage, it also derives the complexity of sensory satisfaction, which is typical of the more evolved animals.
And finally, wine and film
The Taurasi del Cancelliere, curiously or not, expresses itself in the same way.
From the simplicity of a wine created according to natural and “biological” rules, ie without adding sulphites, yeasts, tannins, or any other substances that modify its naturalness, we pass to a pout-pourri of aromas and flavors.
We rarely could have found such a perfect match between cinematography and oenology, this 1999 film by a master who has signed famous films like Spartacus, A Clockwork Orange and the immortal Shining.
Taken from the book by Austrian artist Arthur Schnitzler Traumnovelle, Eyes Wide Shut, as well as the author’s will, is a shocking but still undervalued film.
