Buddenbrooks | Luca Guadagnino

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“There are two books that I grew up with, one I read before [“Queer”], which is ‘Buddenbrooks’ by Thomas Mann,” said Guadagnino. “I think they are kind of mirroring each other, or they are the flip coin of each other. One [‘Queer’] is about the longing of the past and the unavoidability when you meet someone that is really pulling you in, and you want to see yourself reflected in the gaze of the other. And the other one [‘Buddenbrooks’] is about the decadence of a Western society rooted in the most brutal form of repression, internal before being external. To understand the obscenity of repression being acted out upon people, I think you have to see and look into the repression that the people who are exerting repression over other people have within themselves, not to justify them, but to go to the root of this heart of darkness.”

The influence Mann’s 1901 novel had on Guadagnino is something he has spoken about before, but he revealed to IndieWire that he is now in the process of adapting it with “We Are Who We Are” creator/writer Francesca Manieri. source