How entertaining? ★★★★☆
Thought provoking? ★★★☆☆ 14 August 2013
This article is a review of THE GREAT BEAUTY.
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“I’m not a misogynist, I’m a misanthrope,” Jep Gambardella (Toni Servillo)
THE GREAT BEAUTY has surely cemented director Paolo Sorrentino as one of Europe’s elite filmmakers. As focus Jep talks of his own misanthropy, that noun may be an accusation levelled at Sorrentino after viewing his second two features – THE CONSEQUENCES OF LOVE and THE FAMILY FRIEND. There is a hopelessness (with humanity sprinkled). IL DIVO was a visual masterclass; the camera roving and swirling like liquid. There was coldness and resignation seeped into the look at rotten politics. Then came a shock, THIS MUST BE THE PLACE, a road trip oozing warmth. The sequence introducing David Bryne left my jaw agape. Perhaps not as embraced as Sorrentino (or myself) would have liked, the director has licked his wounds, and now delivered his most consummate work to date; continuing his arguable preoccupation with detachment, and suffusing it with more accessible empathy.
THE GREAT BEAUTY shares THE TREE OF LIFE’s easing us in and easing us out of an elegiac narrative, through bewitching compositions tied to beguiling harmonies. Vladimir Martynov’s wonderful ‘The Beautitudes’, performed by the Kronos Quartet, is a musical piece returned to and turned into theme. The mournful yearning matches the lead’s existential crisis:
- Has he wasted his life?
- Should he have ever allowed the love of his life to drift from him?
- Can he find peace and purpose in a return to novel writing?
THE GREAT BEAUTY has surely cemented director Paolo Sorrentino as one of Europe’s elite filmmakers. As focus Jep talks of his own misanthropy, that noun may be an accusation levelled at Sorrentino after viewing his second two features – THE CONSEQUENCES OF LOVE and THE FAMILY FRIEND. There is a hopelessness (with humanity sprinkled). IL DIVO was a visual masterclass; the camera roving and swirling like liquid. There was coldness and resignation seeped into the look at rotten politics. Then came a shock, THIS MUST BE THE PLACE, a road trip oozing warmth. The sequence introducing David Bryne left my jaw agape. Perhaps not as embraced as Sorrentino (or myself) would have liked, the director has licked his wounds, and now delivered his most consummate work to date; continuing his arguable preoccupation with detachment, and suffusing it with more accessible empathy.
THE GREAT BEAUTY shares THE TREE OF LIFE’s easing us in and easing us out of an elegiac narrative, through bewitching compositions tied to beguiling harmonies. Vladimir Martynov’s wonderful ‘The Beautitudes’, performed by the Kronos Quartet, is a musical piece returned to and turned into theme. The mournful yearning matches the lead’s existential crisis:
- Has he wasted his life?
- Should he have ever allowed the love of his life to drift from him?
- Can he find peace and purpose in a return to novel writing?
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Jep is in late middle age, a wealthy journalist covering artistic culture. His company is desired in every social circle that matters. Jep’s success has afforded him a ridiculously gorgeous apartment overlooking the Coliseum. The audience meet him throwing a Sorrentino party – see IL DIVO for another example. To say it is not your usual house jamboree is understatement. Jep has turned 65. His time in Rome since a young man has been fuelled by parties, lovers and general hedonism. Once there, he has never left. Now a landmark year has triggered reassessment.
We slightly overlap into WONDER BOYS. Jep wrote a novel 40 years before to minor acclaim; but has been blocked ever since. Blaming the gorgeousness of the Italian capital for freezing his creativity, he comments on the work of others – calling out falseness. Witness a bizarre modern art performance piece in which a nude woman runs headlong into a wall. Interviewing her after, she talks of “vibrations as poetry”. Scales drop from his eyes, and Jep spies pretentiousness in his own friendship group; or always was aware, but is no longer able to tolerate. His courteous and friendly disembowelling is primarily aimed at himself. A smile virtually always on his face, it is a beam that draws in the characters and audience alike. The grin is inflected with a twinkle of knowing: The superficial has triumphed over substance, realising his capitulation was willing and an eon ago.
Jep takes us on a tour of his life, which is Rome; its aging elite pay 700 Euros for the skills of a doctor choosing where to inject a single Botox syringe. THE GREAT BEAUTY is a hubristic title, but never once is there a feeling that the film doesn’t deserve it. A sublime and touching portrait of aging achingly gracefully.
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