Lasting for more than four hours, Luchino Visconti's "Ludwig" is an exhausting and unrelentingly gloomy film on the life of Bavarian king Ludwig II "the Mad." There is interesting subject matter to work with here. Ludwig's mania for Wagnerian operas and then castles resulted in him bankrupting his kingdom. Then he was forced to abdicate and seek treatment in an insane asylum, where he died along with his psychiatrist under mysterious circumstances.
Nevertheless, Visconti succeeds in making the life of Ludwig II (Helmut Berger) boring. A big reason for the film's problems are the overly long and slow-moving scenes of Ludwig II's coronation, enigmatic conversations with Elizabeth of Austria (Romy Schneider), Richard Wagner and his operas, the king's relationships with attractive males, and so on - all meticulously detailed. You would be forgiven for thinking, as I did, that these overly long scenes were somehow important, because otherwise what is the point of dedicating four hours to figuring out what is going on in this movie. Yet the film's details just accumulate rather than amount to any payoff. In fact, a movie- goer can arrive late, miss the scenes with the coronation and Elizabeth of Austria, and still get as much out of this movie as the person who sat in his seat for four hours. These scenes do not contribute to the plot and are only related in so far as they happen in the life of Ludwig. "Ludwig" also has scenes which seem unnecessary to the plot. Was it necessary to show that many Wagnerian operas or to show Wagner performing music for his mistress, Cosima? Did we really need to know that Bavaria lost the war to Prussia, when Visconti does not seem that interested in explaining what consequences this defeat had for Ludwig or Bavaria? Lastly, there is also something very self- indulgent about this depiction of Ludwig's life. Ludwig's obsession with building opera houses and then castles must have brought considerable hardship to his own people, but this theme is never explored. Instead, Visconti seems content to film Ludwig living in complete isolation of his people and getting swindled by favourites. The message of the film does not seem to be that Ludwig impoverished his people to satisfy his own obsessions (even though such a message would be consistent with Visconti's Marxist beliefs), but rather that living in damp castles is a lonely and depressing experience. It's obvious that Visconti tried to generate some sympathy for Ludwig, but the problem is that the Bavarian king decided to make his own life miserable by indulging heavily in these obsessions in the first place. As a result, it becomes impossible to identify with Ludwig or any of the other characters in this film.
Like other Visconti films, "Ludwig" also has truly beautiful visuals. Yet so what, when the the story was not interesting enough to justify this fantastic cinematography? There are few people who can film a coronation scene as well as Visconti could, but that does not change the fact that I do not want to watch a coronation that shows no sign of ever ending. There are few people who illustrate ostentatious luxury with the same meticulous detail as Visconti, but watching Ludwig gradually deteriorate emotionally and physically in gilded prisons (i.e. castles) of his own making is not my idea of entertainment. What this movie required were film makers willing to make the tough choices about which scenes to keep and which to let go of long before the screenplay went into production.
