The Great Beauty (2013)

Amidst the splendor of Rome and mountains of wealth, a sixty-five-year-old artist named Jep Gambardella searches for beauty and meaning in the art of staying alive. He has written only one book in his life, “The Human Apparatus,” and that was forty years ago—yet this single work still sustains his reputation as a distinguished figure in Rome’s literary and cultural circles. Nearly everyone we see in the film is quite wealthy, their lives flowing through endless amusement. Their greatest identity: they are rich. Parties, clubs, revelry, sensual pleasure, and unmistakably, anguish—this is how they pass their days. The story is fundamentally one of decay and realization. The film’s marriage of imagery and music is flawless, accompanied by a parallel journey through the aging artist’s psychology. All the beauty and melancholy of Rome at night forms the film’s essential substance. Jep appears in the movie as a helpless writer who has been away from writing for many years, enriching the final chapter of his life with the experience of what life and the world are like beyond his writer’s identity. The time between our birth and death passes in a mirage of some truths, half-truths, and lies. The film presents this passage of time as a complete testament to the exquisite melancholy of death, love, beauty, and art. Director Paolo Sorrentino has captured through his protagonist’s eyes the lives of those who represent modern Rome and the decaying elite of contemporary society. “The Great Beauty” (2013) is a dark and luminous chronicle of human relationships, simultaneously offering a grand feast for the viewer’s eyes, ears, and soul. The masterful use of camera angles, movement, color and music, and the charisma of atmosphere-building have provided the substance for this feast.

Jep now works for a magazine. His regular visits to exhibitions of various art forms, his connections with artists, his special intimacy with various models, keeping himself busy with sensual diversions—all of this is actually just a strategy for forgetting life’s disappointments, frustrations, and emptiness by engaging with hedonistic society. His intimacy with Ramona, his friend’s daughter, teaches him to forget the past and future and love the present. The death of Elisa, his childhood sweetheart, plunges him into deep sorrow. Jep’s name appears repeatedly throughout Elisa’s diary, while her husband—with whom she shared thirty-five years of marriage—is mentioned only twice, and even then Elisa refers to him merely as a companion. Elisa could not marry Jep, but spent her entire married life carrying the memory of Jep’s love. Jep encounters a 104-year-old woman whom everyone reveres as a saint. She has spent most of her life with the poor people of Africa and survives on just forty grams of tree roots daily. Such simplicity and wonder in life teaches Jep to think anew about existence and inspires him to walk the path toward that beauty he has been seeking for so long.

In the movie, Jep repeatedly recalls that Proust wanted to write a book whose subject would be “nothing.” The director has done the same here. What the film’s protagonist has done with his own life could be called “nothing,” so in that sense, this cinema speaks about “nothing.” But yes, how Jep is spending his life, what his relationship is with the people and world around him—all this has drawn the movie forward through various background music and magnificent visuals. Jep is honest in his thoughts and actions; he doesn’t take life too seriously, and he doesn’t try to convince himself or anyone else through his deeds and words that he is something special. He cares for no one, does what he enjoys, and no life anxiety touches him. He is a happy man. Jep is not someone who would “ruin summer by planning for September.” Rather, he passes his time quite pleasantly with all the beautiful things around him—paintings, food, birds, churches, trees, the sea, and of course, women. His days are spent living in the present, and it looks quite appealing. However, two aspects are missing from his life: the joy of fulfilling dreams, and the fulfillment of having someone to be with. Jep is enjoying his time, that’s true, but the greatest beauty he has never glimpsed is love. He is quite content with parties, fun, alcohol, women, wealth, fame, respect—everything—but no one loves him; there is no person in his life who truly loves him.

In the movie, everyone is spinning in such an endless loop that there is no way out. Those around them are just like them—disappointed, anxious, and angry about life. They spend Rome’s glittering nights in monotony. There is no beauty there, no love. There is wealth, but no spirit. Their lives contain no achievement worth remembering, nothing that could bring them honor. Through some extraordinary dialogue, the movie brilliantly captures the emptiness and grayness of this upper-class hedonistic community of Rome. This is such a film that has no beginning, no end. Looking at the film’s beginning, duration, and conclusion, what strikes the eye is the sorrow of being unable to touch true beauty. However, the film’s theme is nothing novel, and watching the movie, it felt like a forty-to-forty-five-minute film had been stretched to two hours and twenty-one minutes. Nudity has been dragged in repeatedly. Such irrelevant and excessive arrangements become tiresome. If you sit down to watch this movie with a weary mind, more weariness will surely take hold. The director has tried to follow Fellini in the film’s visualization and storytelling style, which is glaringly obvious, and precisely because it’s so obvious, the director’s philosophy seems imposed—one doesn’t quite feel like accepting it in disguised consideration. While watching the movie, the thought often comes to mind: why doesn’t it end yet?