La Grande Bellezza – Die große Schönheit (2013)

La Grande Bellezza – Die große Schönheit: Directed by Paolo Sorrentino. With Toni Servillo, Carlo Verdone, Sabrina Ferilli, Carlo Buccirosso. Jep Gambardella has seduced his way through the lavish nightlife of Rome for decades, but after his 65th birthday and a shock from the past, Jep looks past the nightclubs and parties to find a timeless landscape of absurd, exquisite beauty.

“Russian composer Vladimir Martynov said, u0026quot;A man touches the truth twice. The first time is the first cry from a new born babyu0026#39;s lips and the last is the death rattle. Everything between is untruth to a greater or lesser extent.u0026quot; Many Hindu and Buddhist teachings also refer to the world as being Maya or illusion. According to French writer Louis-Ferdinand Celine, u0026quot;Our journey is entirely imaginary. That is its strength. Itu0026#39;s a novel, just a fictitious narrative.u0026quot; In Paolo Sorrentinou0026#39;s stunning The Great Beauty, novelist Jep Ganbardella (Toni Servillo), unable to write another book since his successful first novel, The Human Apparatus, agrees, saying u0026quot;After all… itu0026#39;s just a trick. Yes, itu0026#39;s just a trick.u0026quot; To discover that, however, he has to move past u0026quot;the chitter-chatter and the noise, silence and sentiment, emotion and fear, the haggard, inconstant flashes of beauty, and then the wretched squalor and miserable humanity, all buried under the cover of the embarrassment of being in the world.u0026quot; Winner of the Golden Globe award for Best Foreign Film and Italyu0026#39;s entry for the 2014 Oscars in the same category, The Great Beauty is a character study of the decadent elites of modern Rome and by extension, contemporary society, yet it also moves beyond that to examine eternal themes of death, love, beauty, and the complexity of life and art.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe film begins on a jarring and surreal note and continues in an episodic Fellini-like vein throughout its two and one-half hour runtime – the sweet life revisited. After snapping a picture of the skyline with its beautiful domes and bell towers, a Japanese tourist visiting Janiculum Hill suddenly collapses and dies. We are suddenly shifted to a raucous 65th birthday party for Gambardella on a terrace opposite the Roman Colosseum where seemingly all the socialites, would-be artists, and pseudo-elites have gathered, perhaps the one-percenters of Roman society. One almost expects to see an u0026quot;Occupy Via Venetou0026quot; demonstration in the streets below.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eAs Jep moves in and out and around the Roman high life, Sorrentinou0026#39;s acerbic put-downs and satire of the rich and famous travel with him. Now a journalist for a Vanity-Fair style culture magazine, he watches a performance artist run headlong into a brick wall, sustaining a deep cut on her head, then later interviews her, doggedly asking her to explain what she meant by u0026quot;feeling vibrations.u0026quot; He waits his turn for a plastic surgeon at a Botox injection session, takes in a performance of a man throwing knives at a frightened-looking woman, observes a live giraffe at a historic site in rehearsal for a magic show, looks at a photographeru0026#39;s self-portraits that span his entire lifetime, and sees a 12-year-old girl heaving different colored cans of paint at a wall canvas while crying and screaming.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThrough all the partying, the hedonism, and the ersatz art shows, there exists a stream of discernible emptiness that runs not only through his own life, but through the lives of those he surrounds himself with. After calling out a womanu0026#39;s pretensions, he softens the blow by telling her, u0026quot;Weu0026#39;re all on the brink of despair. All we can do is look each other in the face, keep each other company, joke a little. Donu0026#39;t you agree?u0026quot; His relationship with Ramona (Sabrina Ferilli), the daughter of his good friend, the struggling playwright Romano (Carlo Verdone), however, brings a new focus to his life but it is short-lived.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eIt is only when he hears of the death of Eliza, a girl he loved as a teenager, that he receives a wake-up call. Reliving his missed opportunity in flashbacks, he learns through her diary that she loved him all along and begins to reexamine the direction of his life. After a less than enlightening meeting with an aging cardinal (Roberto Herlitzka) who wants to talk only about his favorite recipes, he throws a dinner party for a 104-year-old woman rumored to be destined for sainthood who has spent her life working with the poor in Africa and who subsists on 40 grams of plant roots. Seeing life in all of its simplicity and wonder, she movingly points him in the direction of the authentic u0026quot;great beautyu0026quot; that he seeks.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eServillo is magnificent as the blocked writer seeking renewal and his presence makes every scene come alive with spontaneity. Adding to this is the gorgeous soundtrack featuring The Beatitudes of Martynov, choral works by David Lang, John Taverner, and Arvo Part, and the contemporary Yolanda Be Coolu0026#39;s We No Speak Americano. Though The Great Beauty is not a film about Rome per se, the cinematography of Luca Bigazza memorably captures the striking sights and sounds of The Eternal City, the ancient monuments juxtaposed with the modern buildings. Literally bursting with the pulse of flawed humanity, The Great Beauty is a feast for the eyes, the ears, and the soul.”