Review of The Great Beauty (2013) by Callum M — 22 Sep 2013

The Great Beauty (La Grande Bellezza) is one of the best films released this year, and that I have seen in a long time.

A film filled with joy, laughter, wonderful characters and, most importantly, nothingness.

See it if only to see the scene in which the main character, the listless writer Jep Gambardella, listens to a member of his clique discuss her devotion to "civil vocation" and the sacrifices she makes on a daily basis as "a woman and a mother". As she is saying that all of the other collected writers and artists present make no such sacrifices as her and do not work nearly as hard, Jep says that she, just like all of them, is a collection of untruths and fragilities. She, outraged, presses him to tell her what these untruths and fragilities are, and he, after being pressed several more times (though the surrounded friends ask him not to rise to the bait), completely deconstructs the woman's entire life in a lazy, half-bored drawl as she watches on, helpless, while Jep delivers the entire monologue with a smile.

Paulo Sorrentino, the director, is like a perfected latter-day Malick; the use of music is very similar, and the film is filled with those rambling steadicam shots of things of beauty, but where Malick roots these in the abstract, Sorrentino roots them in his narrative and his characters.

Go and see it if you can! Absolutely marvelous!