Review of The Great Beauty (2013) by Matthew S — 21 Jul 2015

Decent, but uneven, Italian drama.

A journalist/writer, Jep, turns 65 and starts to reminisce, plus ponder his life. What happens next is essentially several days in his life: his friends, interests and regrets.

A movie which touches on many aspects of life: art, and how pretentious it can be, personal regret, friendship, finding meaning beauty in life. (The pretentiousness of art topic is examined with great hilarity in the scenes with the viaduct-head-butting performance artist - for me, the best passage of the movie. Quite ironic then that the movie also veers into pretentiousness from time to time).

However, for all its good intentions and deeper meanings, the movie is quite uneven. There are scenes and moments of great profundity, emotion and/or humour, followed by scenes that add nothing and just seem to drag the story out. The movie is a roller-coaster ride of dullness and entertainment.

Ultimately, quite watchable, with a good ending. It does require some perseverance though...

Despite being far from perfect, The Great Beauty won Best Foreign Language Film at the 2014 Oscars. This despite the superb Danish film, Jagten/The Hunt, being nominated. The Hunt is a far better film. I guess the judges were sucked in by the Felliniesque style-over-substance and ode-to-Rome traits of The Great Beauty and felt obliged to give it the award. Would be sacrilegious to not give the award to a Fellini-like film...