Italian Film La Grande Bellezza

[Kerby Kolpack]

TheGreat Beauty (Italian: La grande bellezza [la ˈɡrande belˈlettsa]) is a 2013 art drama film co-written and directed by Paolo Sorrentino. Filming took place in Rome starting on 9 August 2012. It premiered at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival where it was screened in competition for the Palme d'Or.[3] It was shown at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival,[4] the 2013 Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival (winning Grand Prix), and at the 2013 Reykjavik European Film Festival.

Jep Gambardella is a 65-year-old seasoned journalist and theater critic, a fascinating man, mostly committed to wandering among the social events of a Rome immersed in the beauty of its history and in the superficiality of its inhabitants today, in a merciless contrast. He also ventured into creative writing in his youth: he is the author of only one work called The Human Apparatus. Despite the appreciation and the many awards he received, Jep has not written other books, not only for his laziness but above all for a creative block from which he cannot escape. The purpose of his existence has been to become a "socialite", but not just any socialite, but "the king of society".

Jep is surrounded by several friends: Romano, a playwright who is perpetually on the leash of a young woman who exploits him; Lello, a mouthy and wealthy toy seller; Viola, a wealthy bourgeois and mother of a son with serious mental problems named Andrea; Stefania, a self-centred radical chic writer; Dadina, the dwarf editor of the newspaper where Jep works.

One morning, he meets the husband of Elisa, a woman who has been Jep's first and probably only love: the man announces that Elisa has died, leaving behind only a diary in which the woman tells of her love for Jep; thus, her husband discovered that he had been a mere surrogate for 35 years, nothing more than "a good companion". Elisa's husband, now afflicted and grieved, will soon find consolation in the affectionate welcome of his foreign maid. After this episode, Jep begins a profound and melancholic reinterpretation of his life and a long meditation on himself and on the world around him. And, above all, he thinks about starting to write again.

During the following days, Jep meets Ramona, a stripper with painful secrets, and Cardinal Bellucci, in whom the passion for cooking is more alive than his Catholic faith; Jep is gradually convinced of the futility and uselessness of his existence. Soon his "vicious circle" also breaks down: Ramona, with whom he had established an innocent and profound relationship, dies of an incurable disease; Romano, disappointed by the deceptive attractiveness of Rome, leaves the city, farewelling only Jep; Stefania, humiliated by Jep, who had revealed her secrets and her lies to her face, left Jep's worldly circle; Viola, on the other hand, after the death of her son, donates all her possessions to the Church and becomes a missionary in Africa.

Just when hopes seem to abandon Jep once and for all, he is saved by a new episode: after a meeting, pushed by Dadina, who wants to get an interview with a "Saint", a Catholic missionary nun in the Third World, Jep goes to Giglio Island to report on the shipwreck of the Costa Concordia. Right here, remembering his first meeting with Elisa in a flashback, a glimmer of hope rekindles in him: his next novel is finally ready to come to light.

The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 91% approval rating, based on 135 reviews, with a weighted average rating of 8/10. The website's critical consensus states, "Dazzlingly ambitious, beautifully filmed, and thoroughly enthralling, The Great Beauty offers virtuoso filmmaking from writer/director Paolo Sorrentino."[13] The film holds a score of 86/100 on Metacritic based on 34 reviews, signifying "universal acclaim".[14]

Robbie Collin at The Daily Telegraph awarded Sorrentino's film the maximum five stars and described it as "a shimmering coup de cinema". He likened it to Roberto Rossellini's Rome, Open City and Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita in its ambition to record a period of Roman history on film. "Rossellini covered the Nazi occupation of 1944; Fellini the seductive, empty hedonism of the years that followed. Sorrentino's plan is to do the same for the Berlusconi era," he wrote.[15] Deborah Young of The Hollywood Reporter stated "Sorrentino's vision of moral chaos and disorder, spiritual and emotional emptiness at this moment in time is even darker than Fellini's (though Ettore Scola's The Terrace certainly comes in somewhere)."[16] Critics have also identified other purposefully explicit film homages: to Roma, 8,[17] Scola's Splendor,[citation needed] Michelangelo Antonioni's La notte.[18] Spanish film director Pedro Almodvar named the film as one of the twelve best films of 2013, placing it second in his list.[19] In 2016, the film was ranked among the 100 greatest films since 2000 in an international critics poll by 177 critics around the world.[20] It is currently director Paolo Sorrentino's second highest rated film on Rotten Tomatoes.[21]

Decadence, bewilderment, and regret infuse the 2013 Italian film La grande bellezza (The Great Beauty). And I felt the same way after watching the film. While it is probably a true-to-life statement about how some people feel in and about the world, I was hoping to see and experience more of the bellezza (beauty) of the eternal city of Rome and of humanity rather than the bruttezza (ugliness) and schifezza (filth) as exhibited in the film.

The protagonist (if you can call him that) is an aging Roman author and socialite named Jep Gambardella (played by Toni Servillo). Jep rose to fame and fortune early in his life by writing a famous and beloved novel. He has since lived his life writing the occasional column and throwing lavish parties (his elegant flat overlooks the Coliseum as shown in the photo above). After his 65th birthday party, Jep walks through the city of Rome, reflecting upon his life, his first love, and his overall sense of malaise.

Inspired by movie. The Great Beauty (Italian: La grande bellezza [la ˈɡrande belˈlettsa]) is a 2013 Italian film co-written and directed by Paolo Sorrentino. Filming took place in Rome starting on 9 August 2012. It premiered at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival where it was screened in competition for the Palme d'Or.[3] It was shown at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival[4] and at the 2013 Reykjavik European Film Festival.

Upon watching La grande bellezza (The Great Beauty, 2013) by Paolo Sorrentino, the first two surfacing feelings are: what a stunning piece of work, and what a desperate country Italy has become. The film is feast for the senses, a synaesthetic experience of visual images, words, and music that cannot shade, but rather highlights, the desolation of the world represented.

Observe. There is not a sad character who moves us to compassion. For everyone, everything is going fine, even if it is going terribly. Everyone is full of energy in managing to survive, even if burdened by death and insensitivity. I have never seen a film in which all the characters are so full of the joy of being. Even the sorrowful events, the tragedies, take shape as phenomena charged with vitality, like spectacles. (4)

And what about the main characters? Their social masks are forever glued to their real faces, the cult of the image deforming features, botox and cocaine its faithful allies (in the sequence with the plastic surgeon, his patients from all social classes behave like religious followers). The rich and beautiful are oblivious to the rest of their fellowmen and to the state of the country, enclosed in a vicious circle of narcissistic pastimes.

Beauty is youth, when you see beauty everywhere, the sense of wonder of the best years: in nature, in sensations, in the sharing of them. This is for me the meaning of the film, particularly at the end. Today everything is made opaque by the lack of collective memory, by bad teachers who have obscured the past and live in the present without direction. There is no time left for contemplation. If the film can help us understand the world around us, we must hasten to take care of an ailing body. (8)

No great beauty, then, but just small fragments of it, like the ironic, whimsical touch that renders every character, from the protagonist to the least rounded ones, an irresistible conflation of surprises and nuances, so fake and so real. Only inanimate things are still and muted. Beauty, it seems, lies in both.

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The award put him in the company of Federico Fellini and Vittorio De Sica in landing the Oscar for Best Foreign Film, a prize that has been won by only seven Italian directors in the history of the Academy Awards.

Lauded for combining an expansive visual style with a sensitivity for psychological subtleties in his films, Sorrentino was born in the Arenella district of Naples, a relatively prosperous neighbourhood atop the Vomero hill.

Actor Toni Servillo in his role as

Jep Gambardella in La grande bellezza Their son may well have died with them but on the fateful April day in 1987 Sorrentino was still in Naples, having stayed behind to watch his idol, Diego Maradona, play for SSC Napoli at the Stadio San Paolo, where he was a season ticket holder.

His first full-length feature L'uomo in pi - One Man Up - brought him immediate recognition as an emerging talent. The film was selected at the 2001 Venice Film Festival, gaining three nominations for the David di Donatello from the Academy of Italian Cinema and winning the Nastro d'Argento, awarded by Italian cinema journalists, Best First Time Director.

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