“The things of this world reveal their essential absurdity when they are put in the Venetian context.” So wrote Mary McCarthy in her charming, philosophical travel essay “Venice Observed.” It can be argued that the essential absurdity of movies is never really in doubt, but the Venice Film Festival — the oldest such event in this world — puts its own stamp on the marvelous, magical and perhaps fundamentally preposterous activities of making, displaying and watching movies. A film festival is a paradoxical phenomenon. Thousands of people crowd into a beautiful place — in this case, an elegant strip of beach across the lagoon from what may be the planet’s most picturesque city — and proceed to spend most of their time huddled in darkened rooms, gazing at a sampling of the world’s misery. Often the harshness of what’s on screen seems calibrated in direct proportion to the glamour and decadence outside, as if the purpose of the films were to dampen and ennoble the air of festivity.

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