Review of The Great Beauty (2013) by Thomas W — 24 May 2014

There actually is a great beauty to this film about an aging gentleman named Jep who wrote one great work of fiction in his 20's and has lived the high-life ever since while never striving to ever achieve the same success he did 40-some years earlier.

Narration early in the film tells us that Jep didn't just want to be a part of Rome's high society ... he wanted to become the King of High Society. And he has ... but at what price? If the film is a metaphor for life -- and I think an argument could be made in favor of this -- those moments of great beauty are fleeting and far between as our life is overrun with chaos and worry and depression and oppression and other truly ugly human contributions.

Jep hasn't paid much attention but I think he shares that characteristic with many once one gets caught up in expectations and delusions. As the film is in Italian and it clocks in at 2 hours and 20 minutes, I wouldn't expect many to go for this one -- the winner of the Best Foreign Language Oscar this year.

Again ... this is kind of the point of the film: look elsewhere and keep pretending.