The Great Beauty

to Felini. to the Rome who remains an obscure legend. to a kind of Visconti universe. to a refuge. eccentric, bizarre, comfortable. a great trip in a well known universe. full of cultural references, in a sort of escapes from yourself in the most profound​ yourself. a magnificent show. or another La bella vita. the same, after decades. but so different for the courage to be itself. a homage and a return. to the old things remaining, always, fundamental.for the extraordinary beauty, for memorable scenes, for a sort of confession of another Giuseppe di Lampedusa, for the scene of meeting with Fanny Ardant, for the venerable nun , for the dose of fascinating freedom.

Italian cinema is, at last, on a roll again. Perhaps not in the same way as when Rossellini, Visconti, Fellini and De Sica were batting masterpiece after masterpiece into the arena but maybe more prodigiously than at any time since the young Olmi and young Bertolucci were setting the screen alight. In recent years we have had Michelangelo Frammartino's "Le Quattro Volte", Gianni De Gregorio's sublimely gentle comedies "Mid-August Lunch" and "The Salt of Life" and, perhaps best of all, the films of Paolo Sorrentino whose "The Consequences of Love", "The Family Friend" and "Il Divo" were highly original and sufficiently off-the-wall to invite comparisons with Fellini. His one venture into English-language cinema, "This Must be the Place", met with a largely hostile reception from critics who accused him of being self-indulgent but I found the film to be gorgeous and quirky and just what I would have expected from so idiosyncratic a talent. And now we have "The Great Beauty", a return to Italy and a return to, what his critics might see as, earlier form.

This film, too, has been compared to Fellini which is entirely appropriate as this is a "La Dolce Vita" for the 21st century. You can even imagine the film's central character, Jeb, as Marcello, older if hardly wiser and for Sorrentino nothing much has changed. But if this is Sorrentino in Fellini mode it's just as close to the beauty and spectacle of "Amarcord" or, more appropriately, "Juliet of the Spirits". Once again the lead is taken by Toni Servillo, who was Sorrentino's Andreotti in "Il Divo" and once again he confirms his position as one of the cinema's finest actors, heading a truly superb ensemble cast.

As in "La Dolce Vita" there is no real 'story' but rather a series of episodes in the life of Jeb in the days following his 65th birthday, (his birthday party is the first of the film's many great sequences). If there is a theme it's Jeb's increasing disillusionment with the lifestyle he has associated himself with over the years, a lifestyle he is very reluctant to give up, no matter how pragmatically he views it. He is a man who has had many women but no real relationship to speak of, (the early love of his life married someone else). He meets the daughter of an old friend, a 42 year old stripper with a drug habit, and they strike up a relationship of sorts though when they go to bed together he is happy when they don't have sex. He gets sustenance from his friends although he can be cutting and abrasive in their presence. It seems as it is they, and not money or power, which keeps him going.

This is a magnificent movie, the kind of film that you know is being composed, frame by gorgeous frame, by a master film-maker. It is a breathtaking melange of sound and images, of great performances and superlative dialogue that draws you in and holds you from its first shot to its last. Some directors open their films with great tracking shots but Sorrentino saves his to the end, up, over and under the bridges of the Tiber as the final credits roll. Don't leave the cinema to the very last second.

Greetings again from the darkness. This is Italy's submission to the Academy for Best Foreign Film of 2013. If it wasn't such a beautiful film to watch, a fun game of spot the Italian director influence could be played. Director Paolo Sorrentino owes much to Fellini and La dolce vita, but this is more than a tribute. Sorrentino shows much style and insight, and his commitment to camera angles, movement, colors, textures and faces are quite something to behold.

Toni Servillo plays Jep Gambardella, a man celebrating his 65th birthday by doing what he does most every night ... partying with his group of intellectual friends. Jep had a successful novel published in his 20's and has since worked sporadically as a journalist, but has never again focused on his writing. One can't help but notice the similarities to Marcello Mastroianni in La dolce vita, but Jep is jolted with news that sends him flashing back to his younger years and his one true love.

Much of the story includes Roman decadence, and it can easily be viewed as the decline of Roman civilization both past and present. See, Jep's apartment overlooks the famous ruins of The Colosseum. Even moreso, we get a nice conflict between uppity society and the all too important modern and conceptual art crowd. Toss in a few pot shots at the Vatican and Sorrentino seems to be telling us that everyone takes themselves entirely too seriously ... even as we belittle and judge others. Whatever his true message, the sensory overload provided here could be a film class in camera style and is quite fun to watch.

The Great Beauty is such an unusual concoction of sights and sounds, it's a wonder it works at all. Watching it is like seeing a walking bicycle and realizing, to your amazement, that one can actually ride it.

The movie follows Jep Gambardella, the king of Rome's night life. Jep came to Rome in his twenties, after having written a very promising novel, but 40 years later he is settled as a journalist for a high-class literary magazine. Jep has friends, who are just as frustrated and unsatisfied with their lives as he is, despite having all their red Ferraris and high-rise condos. Together they keep each other company and form a support group of sorts. The presence of other miserable people convinces them it's OK, the life is still worth living and facade is still worth maintaining.

Jep has invested last four decades into becoming the Rome's chief socialite and now he has the power to make party a success or disaster. But there's something compulsive about his pursuit of entertainment and admiration. Like a functioning alcoholic, Jep doesn't enjoy his life, but has no will to change it either. He reminds me of Michael Fassbender's sex-addict character in Shame. At the time of orgasm, Fassbender's expression was not that of pleasure, but of pain.

Soon after his 65th birthday, Jep notes to himself that he no longer can afford doing things he doesn't want to do. Instead, he looks up his old friends, learns more about his now-dead girlfriend who left him 40 years ago and develops a friendship with 41 year old stripper named Ramona. Ramona doesn't try to appear important or intellectual, she seems to exist entirely in the present moment. (That presence of mind has its own price, as we learn later)

One of the appealing things about Great Beauty is that its characters are not aware of how funny they are. The pinnacle of comical absurdity is a 104 year old Catholic 'saint'. She's not official saint yet, we're told, but everyone calls her Santa (Saint) Maria. She looks like a mummy that just walked out of its glass case in British Museum, communicates with animals and at one point parodies the 'stair crawl' from the Exorcist. And yet, at no point the film is making fun of her. Nobody seems to question their sanity when Santa Maria asks a flock of migrating flamingos to rest on Jep's balcony.

Sometimes I think the Great Beauty is making it intentionally difficult for us to get to the story. The opening scene with Jep's euro-trash birthday party lasts several minutes longer than storytelling rules require. The changes between scenes are often abrupt and even stunning, leaving the viewer to fill the gaps. There's no obvious drama or big emotional payoff, as you'd expect from an American movie. And yet, at its core, it's the same old story about a writer who has lost his inspiration and tries to figure his place in the world. I feel sympathy for him and his journey, just like I would in any other film.

This lengthy (142mins) intriguing, complex movie follows the reflections of former novelist, Jem Gambardella (Toni Servillo), as he contemplates his past and current life, a life, it would appear, of lost opportunities both personal and professional.

As a member of the wealthy elite of Roman society, he participates in their empty pastimes; parties fuelled with drink and drugs, bizarre art events and casual sexual encounters with beautiful but soulless women. Gambardella is both participant and observer, watching himself as much as his associates, mysterious animals trapped in the gilded cage that is Rome with all the stunning beauty of its architecture, fountains, sculptures, and paintings.

We are shown a funeral where Gambradella acts out the etiquette he has just been describing to us; a dinner with a cardinal who seems more interested in food than faith; a saintly nun of extreme age mounting a stone staircase on her knees and crawling painfully onwards and upwards towards an image of Christ . . . Everywhere, life presents contradictions, material and spiritual, emotional pretence and genuine feeling, the Eternal City and its mortal inhabitants, . . .

If all this sounds too heavy, everything is carried along by a welter of gorgeous images complemented by music that varies from the ethereal to hefty thumping dance beats. And the actors' performances are never less than utterly convincing.

At one of the parties as the massed participants enter into yet another conga-style dance, Gambardella remarks that 'we have the best trains in Rome because they don't go anywhere.' Everything comes back to where it starts and ends where it began. So in the long final credits sequence we float languidly beneath the bridges of Rome, left to contemplate the setting in which we first encountered the genial but disillusioned Gambardella.

This is an sumptuous, sensuous, fascinating movie which for me at least probably needs more than one viewing to fully appreciate. Don't miss it!

(Viewed at Screen 1, The Cornerhouse, Manchester, UK, 12 September 2013)