Review // The Great Beauty

Paulo Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty is a superficial spectacle to be savoured.

We meet Jeb Gambardella on the eve of his 65th birthday. He is throwing a wild rooftop party and – as always – is the centre of attention. Made famous by a novel he wrote as a young man, Jeb has enjoyed the easy life of a newspaper arts columnist ever since, spending his nights partying with Rome’s cultural elite, and waking late in the afternoon in his apartment overlooking the Coliseum. However upon hearing of the death of his first love, Jeb is sent in to a fit of nostalgia and introspection, searching for The Great Beauty that he let slip away decades earlier.

This shift into nostalgia sends him on a journey through the Eternal City, the viewer on his shoulder. Drifting from the nightlife scene to quieter and more spiritual areas, Jeb encounters a vast array of Rome’s citizens, all caricatures, all with a story. There’s a blue haired dwarf who cooks him dinner, a stripper with whom he tours Rome’s galleries, a “trustworthy” man with keys to the entire city, and a magician who makes a giraffe disappear. And that’s just a small sampling.

It’s also wickedly funny. Tony Servillo’s Jeb is the classic cool customer. Always slightly above his situation yet deeply troubled and unfulfilled, Jeb has a quick line for everyone. Servillo injects the character with a perfect world-weariness; his aging form propped up by an expensive suit and perpetual grin. A dinner party held at Jeb’s to honour a newly arrived (and extremely elderly) saint seems almost out of place it’s so funny. Yet such scenes are quickly countered by scenes of powerful symbolism. The saint sleeps on his stone floor. She sits on Jeb’s balcony surrounded by cranes. What does all this mean? You’re never sure, but you don’t mind not knowing, it’s simply a pleasure to watch.

One would do well to study-up on their Italian cinema before watching The Great Beauty. After New York, Rome is perhaps the most oft-immortalized city on the silver screen and Sorrentino’s film certainly evokes a rich cinematic history. Like La Dolce Vita, Sorrentino focuses his lens on the excess and empty indulgence of the Italian upper-class. His characters are shallow, self-centered human beings, only happy when they have something to rub against. If Frederico Fellini’s film criticized the hedonism of post-war Italy, The Great Beauty suggests that in Berlusconi’s modern incarnation, little progress has been made.

A hangover has never looked so good as it does through Sorrentino’s lens. Slow and contemplative, the film makes every frame count. Every shot is a work of art. Each episode a masterpiece in itself. At times you are transported by the architecture and music of the Eternal City. At other times, it’s a wild, pulsing drug-trip, exuberant and unabashed. A kaleidoscopic banquet of breathtaking images and empty excess, The Great Beauty is exactly that.

If you like your films with clearly defined messages and gripping plot lines, this may not be the one for you. For all it’s positives the film is quite light on conflict or challenges for it’s characters to overcome. However it more than makes up for this with it’s sheer visual opulence. Jeb searches for The Great Beauty in Rome, but Sorrentino has found it in cinema. I highly recommend you catch it on the big screen if you can.

Reviewed by Evan Arppe.

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