MOVIE: The Great Beauty

The Great Beauty: the best foreign film Oscar nominee from Italy.  It is a worthy nominee and may be the only one of the five films nominated in the best foreign film category that have been shown in Honolulu.  Stylistic, Great Beauty, directed by Paolo Sorrentino, is very non-Hollywood.  Based on the opening scenes of this 142 minute movie, I wondered whether I had strayed into a dance flick.  The opening sequence is an elaborate 65th year birthday party for the central character, Jep Gambardella.  It is held on Gambardella’s outdoor terrace, which offers a view of the Colosseum.  While dance scenes at the apartment reoccur, the movie uses the line dance and the individual as part of an elaborate metaphor to describe a society and a  country.  Many of you have asked if I start writing my commentary promptly after seeing a movie.  I do not.  I usually let the movie rumble around in my mind for a period of time.  Sometimes, after further contemplation, I develop a growing respect for the movie beyond my initial reaction.  While the opposite sometimes occurs, this is one of those movies where the more you think about it, the more you realize that this portrait of a life is really a commentary on a country that has gone adrift.  Other than movie directors and opera singers, what has Italy produced in Jep’s adult lifetime?  The film is probably also making a significant statement about Catholicism but I don’t have the knowledge to elaborate.  Toni Servillo plays Jep, a wealthy socialite who wrote a singular award winning novel but is now just a journalist.  In a reoccurring dialogue, someone asks Jep why he hasn’t written a second piece.  As the story unfolds, we learn that Jep arrived in Rome at the age of 26 and the novel was published when he was in his 20s.  But his ambition was to become “king of the high life” and, at this, he succeeded.  There are numerous shots of beautiful paintings and statutes in addition to beautiful people, most with no substance.  The movie is beautiful to look at, but my initial reaction was that the film dragged on for too long - I got its points.  However, after thinking more about what I had seen, I realized that what Sorrentino has offered as a tale of love and work, was also a commentary on what is lost by focusing too much on present pleasures.  I think this is where the religious intersects with a culture resigned to not meeting its potential, just as Jep never fulfilled his potential as a novelist.  An excellent supporting cast although not actors with whom I’m familiar.  I think the more you know about Italy and/or the Catholic faith, the more you will appreciate this film.  What is remarkable is that politics are never discussed and most of the scenes revolve around the wealthy, but the social reality is always present.  The movie is subtitled.  For some scenes there are a torrent of words while in others, no translation is provided.  I know that not speaking Italian is another reason, along with not being Catholic, that there is more to this film than I am equipped to comprehend, but I saw and understood enough to recommend this film.  Jep is a vehicle by which to comment on modern Italian life.  What triggered my realizing that Sorrentino’s points were more expansive than my first reaction is the scene of Jep viewing the cruise ship, Costa Concordia, that ran aground off the Tuscan coast.  It is a visual statement and no words are uttered as Jep looks down on the wreck.  I’m left with the view that Sorrentino is the present day Federico Fellini of Italian cinema.