Venus

Peter O'Toole (of Lawrence of Arabia fame) stars in Venus as an old man trying to face death and return to his youth through his attraction to a 20-year-old woman (his best friend's great-niece). Now of course, this is a common theme and a little sketchy, but thinking about it mythologically, I connected it to such unlikely themes as Adam and Eve's loss of innocence.

Jessie, the young woman who Morris calls "Venus," is a tough-talking English teenager who comes to stay with Morris' best friend as his helper/nurse. Morris is drawn to her luscious young good looks immediately, having quite a history as a successful actor and dashing hedonist. In the background of the story is Morris' wife, who he has been separated from for years, since he left her with three young children for some young actress. Clearly, his whole life is an attempt to regain his youth.

Mythologically speaking, this attraction to younger women and their perceived innocence is of course an attempt to go back to the edenic time of childhood, when we felt oneness with our mothers and a sense of immortality. As we grow up, we encounter death, and it is traumatic. This parallels Adam and Eve's fall from innocence, when they gain knowledge of both good and evil, that is, both imminent death and the knowledge of their mortality. Death never becomes an acceptable prospect, as St. Paul says--all humanity is controlled by a fear of death.

However, the reality of life is that there is death, there is a cycle, and that is what Morris has to accept. Towards the end of the film he visits his wife and recognizes how messed up he was to have left her with three children. Jessie was also left by a man when he found out she was pregnant.

This fear of having children is a fear of death disguised, since having children means entering into the natural cycle, which includes the inevitability of death. In this view, sex is a childish experience, not an adult one. It is an attempt to return to the oneness of childhood by finding a mother substitute in a woman (preferably a young one). However, as soon as she gets pregnant, and the reality of adulthood sets in, it's too scary for someone who is running from "knowledge." Having children means somehow a need to replace oneself to carry on the human race. I think it is funny how soon we can have children after being children ourselves. It is a fast loss of innocence. However, women are forced to accept it sooner than men, because their bodies are tied to nature and its cycles. Men can sort of pretend that they're not tied to nature and that they are immortal until, like Morris, they are forced to face death. By returning to his wife, who is also old, not young like Jessie, he sort of accepts nature--women get old, and he is old, too. You can accept reality, and it is ok.

Morris has lived his whole life for "pleasure," a futile attempt to recapture innocence, youth and paradise and escape reality. However, as Jessie tells her story, because at her young age she's already encountered both sexuality and death, it's clear that she is not that innocent he wants her to be. Her life is no Eden; she's just as much a part of the natural cycle as his aging wife.

In this association of childbirth with death, because it is part of nature, many symbols stand for the womb--of course blood, but also water. There is an ambivalence in trying to return to the womb and its feeling of closeness to the mother, an edenic sense of unity such as Adam and Eve shared with each other. However, it also represents death, like immersion in the waters of baptism--a loss of selfhood into another's self. The ocean represents this return to origins, as well as being connected to Venus, who was supposedly born out of the ocean. Morris takes his shoes off and walks into the sea just minutes before he dies peacefully. As we return to the earth in death, we are returning to Mother Earth. She represents life as well as death. Acceptance of this cycle is wisdom, wisdom that would have allowed Morris to accept his aging wife rather than being scared of the mortality she represents. Any attempt to regain innocence is an illusion anyway, as seen by Jessie's early initiation into the evils of "reality." Eden is just an illusion at this point in the world.

Interestingly, although this movie seems mainly focused on accepting death and nature, there is the question of true, spiritual immortality. When Morris confesses that he has spent his whole life pursuing pleasure, Jessie asks "don't you believe in anything?" This is not, for her, a religious question but it bears reflection. Morris doesn't seem aware of anything transcendent. I think you must accept nature, that is, mortality, like St. Francis, who welcomed "Little Sister Death," or even Jesus, who willingly died, before you can make life possible--in either the natural sense (childbearing) or the spiritual sense (serenity). You must believe you will die before you can deal with the business of living forever.