Transient Beauty

The Picture of Dorian Gray is a very well written, timeless movie. It tells the story of a man whose soul ages in a portrait, while his appearance stays his innocent twenty-two year old self. The message this film addresses is that beauty is transient and that any attempt to make it anything other than that leads to the corruption of one's self. This true beauty comes from innocence.

                In the scene that I like Lord Henry describes how this innocence can be stricken away when trying to hide from oneself. When Dorian first meets Lord Henry, Basil entreats him to not listen to a word he says, as he is a bad influence. When Dorian asks him if he really is a bad influence, Lord Henry replies “There is no such thing as a good influence, Mr. Gray. All influence is immoral-immoral from the scientific point of view.” Dorian of course inquires further, and Lord Henry continues with “Because to influence as person is to give him one’s own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of someone else’s music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development. To realize one’s nature perfectly-that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays…” This turns to be true at the end of the movie, that people are afraid of themselves, as Dorian is afraid of the true man he becomes, as he can see in his portrait.

                The most important part of this scene though is when the portrait is finally revealed to Dorian himself. Basil and Lord Henry never cease commenting on his beauty while looking at the final portrait, and Basil insists the portrait painted itself, as if it were guiding his hand. When Dorian finally laid his eyes on the portrait, the scene is shot in color, showing the true innocence of Dorian’s soul, and the last of his innocence at that. The beauty Basil and Lord Henry had been commenting on, whether they were aware of it or not, was of Dorian’s soul, not his earthly body.

                When Dorian sees this beauty, and hears Lord Henry speaking of how transient it really is, he says “If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old! For that I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for that!” And thus Dorian seals his fate of destroying his innocence with the immorality that comes from eluding the brevity of beauty.