 | Paolo Sorrentino takes you on a ride, and what a ride it is. From death to birth, a journey where you can experience everything life has to offer; parties and spirited disagreements with friends, the rediscovery of a long lost love, which was always with you, memories of the happiest times in your life, all happening in a city which radiates such grace you wouldn’t want to live anywhere else. I haven’t been able to write for awhile, though I’ve been thinking about this film for over two years. I concede it's one of the best films from the last ten years. It is reminiscent of “La Dolce Vita” but in addition encompasses life and death. It embraces the existential struggle of the intellectual searching for Jep’s place in a seemingly pointless world. A world where art is inferior, yet omnipotent. Begging the question: Does it matter when “Our journey is entirely imaginary?” |
I haven’t been able to write for awhile, though I’ve been thinking about this film for over two years. I concede it's one of the best films from the last ten years. It is reminiscent of “La Dolce Vita” but in addition encompasses life and death. It embraces the existential struggle of the intellectual searching for Jep’s place in a seemingly pointless world. A world where art is inferior, yet omnipotent. Begging the question: Does it matter when “Our journey is entirely imaginary?”
The opening sequence of the film reminds me of a walk though a museum; graceful tracking and dolly shots emphasizing the every day beauty of the eternal city with all the mundane occurrences. The shots are dominated by the nuisance of the tourists; they are everywhere, but in this instance they are not obtrusive.
The music: Beautiful, graceful, and religious, asks us to “worship” the city and its marvel. All ending in a death. A normal morning of a normal day begins with a bang; the death of a Japanese tourist, a foreigner.
Should we be shocked at this unexpected contrast of something so normal?
Isn’t death the conclusion of our finite journey? One can ask - what is the best part of life? - it seems the answer is life itself.
We have to take Jep seriously when he says, “The best people in Rome are the tourists.” The riffle of life in the film begins with death - and with each death, some people are greatly affected, but ultimately life goes on.
The director relies on the cinematography in the sequence to convey this concept. The camera movements never stop. One can argue that the frenetic camera shots coincide with the death of the tourist to mean death is inevitable; it will come around no matter what, just like life.
The nightlife in the next sequence is associated with life and vitality. It opens with a piercing, yet joyful scream followed up with contagious, techno, music pulling you into the party, and what a party it is. It brings to mind the William Parrish’ 65 year anniversary party in Meet Joe Black. (I’m not going to say anything more about that movie).
In the birthday scene from "The Great Beauty" we are introduced to the major characters, including the charming and sensible, Jep Gambardella.
The editing in this sequence propels the meaning of the scene forward. Happiness, is a temporary state within the human being’s fragmented existence. The sequence is not constructed through camera movements, but through the juxtaposition of humans in various states of dancing euphoria. The only “interesting” shot is an upside down shot of Jep just before he is introduced to us.
We then meet one of the central characters, Dadina. She is not only the editor of the newspaper Jep works for, but also the one person Jep must answer to. As the editor of “A paper (that) has a core of cultured readers that don’t want to be taken for fools” she represents art at the highest level. Its not coincidental the this “high art” is represented by a dwarf. Is it because in the great scheme of things art is just something we can all live without? After all, she is the only one left behind at the party. Furthermore the most conspicuous object in her office is a huge white bear. Is this bear another art metaphor? The pure size of the animal represents her stature as an editor, but ultimately it's a harmless, stuffed, white toy. Not unlike art and philosophy, they attempt to change the world, but rarely succeed. Nevertheless they are the ones to pose the big questions; What is the meaning of life? When Dadina asks Stefania “So if we don’t have children, we should contemplate the idea of suicide?”
This seems to be a lifelong argument; why do so many people look for the meaning of life in procreation? Is it possible that there is more to the existence of man than boasting of succeeding at something that any 14 year old can do?
Jep seems to speak for those facing mid-life as he chastises Stefania with a bitter, poignant truth. “You’re 53, with a life in tatters, like the rest of us. Instead of acting superior and treating us with contempt you should look at us with affection. We are all in the brink of despair, all we can do is look each other in the face, keep each other company, joke a little. Don’t you agree?”
From here on we are engrossed in Jep’s life, but who is he? He lacks the empathy to help Viola and her son, Andrea. On two occasions (when Viola asks him for help in his house and when Andrea talks to him at the restaurant) Jep is incapable of connecting to human drama. He can’t connect to Orietta either. In a typical male moment of clarity after sex, he declares that after turning 65 he realizes that he can’t waste any more time doing things “I don’t want to do.”
He can’t connect with Elisa’s husband, Alfredo, either. It seems like we have a deeply emotional person who started as a sentimentalist (he likes the smell of old people’s homes as a child), who also wrote a book called “The Human Apparatus” implying that he is concerned with existence and the meaning of life, but has turned into a cynic, an isolated human being. The perfect subject for Flaubert’s desire to write a book about nothing, as Jep repeats a couple times.
Just like the trains(line dances) in their parties. “The trains in our parties are the best because they lead nowhere.” How can they lead anywhere, when the participants are just “passing shadows?" - just like the little girl-prophet, Franchesca, hiding from her mom and from the viewers (we don’t see her face) asks him “Who are you?” After seeing the perplexed expression on Jep’s face and not receiving an answer, she delivers the subtle and bleak “You are nobody,” meaning he is everybody, every single one of us, just a passing shadow that walks over the sewer, looking down and passing through.
Jep tries to escape total isolation as a human being through his connection with Ramona, but like Woody Allen says. “ Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering, and it's all over much too soon.” Even Ramona agrees “Family is a beautiful thing, but I’m not cut out for beautiful things.” Jep’s friends have become the family that he never created.
Cinematically, there are 2 shots that represent the perfect metaphor for life and death in the film. The first shot representing life, is the wide shot of Jep and Alfredo on the staircase, right after Alfredo has told him Elisa is dead. We have Jep and Alfredo standing in the middle of the staircase landing. To the side of Jep we have both staircases, one leading up and one leading down. The staircase leading down represents his past life, where he came from (coming to Rome at age 26 hoping to be the king of high life and controlling the success and failure of these parties.) Most prominent are the stairs leading up to where Elisa is, in heaven. Behind Alfredo and to the side is the flat, marble landing, impersonal and boring, resembling Jep's life the way Elisa described it in her diary; The past, present and future of normalcy.
The second shot, representing death, follows after we see Jep’s failure at his second chance to secure a normal life. Ramona dies and Jep is on the shore observing an overturned cruise ship. He doesn’t cry nor is he contemplative. The cruise ship, usually occupied with families spending time together, is inverted and gorged with unrealized potential.
Thus in the last few shots of the film, Jep finally reaches the answer he is looking for. Alone on the island, standing at the place he had his first sexual encounter with Elisa, he contemplates, “This is how it always ends. With death. But first there was life. Hidden beneath the blah, blah, blah. The haggard, inconstant flashes of beauty. And then the wretched squalor and the miserable humanity. All buried under the cover of the embarrassment of being in the world. After all … it’s just a trick.”
Life is a trick and mysteriously it leads to the death of his writer's block and the beginning of his second novel. In this case, the journey of the film is from death to life.
This “marvel in its beauty” is completely and utterly impossible to appreciate if I don’t mention the outstanding and preeminent choice of music and the exceptional locations and magnificent wardrobe. The combination of all, makes you lose yourself in this world. Like the film says “Travel is useful, it exercises the imagination. All the rest is disappointment and fatigue.”
5 / 5
Director: Paolo Sorrentino
Staring: Toni Servillo, Carlo Verdone, Sabrina Ferilli, Iaia Forte
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