#702: SORRENTINO, Paolo: The Great Beauty (2013)

SORRENTINO, Paolo (Italy)

The Great Beauty [2013]

Spine #702
Blu-ray

For decades, journalist Jep Gambardella has charmed and seduced his way through the glittering nightlife of Rome. Since the legendary success of his only novel, he has been a permanent fixture in the city's literary and elite social circles. But on his sixty-fifth birthday, Jep unexpectedly finds himself taking stock of his life, turning his cutting wit on himself and his contemporaries, and looking past the lavish nightclubs, parties, and cafés to find Rome itself, in all its monumental glory: a timeless landscape of absurd, exquisite beauty. Featuring sensuous cinematography, a lush score, and an award-winning central performance by the great Toni Servillo, this transporting experience by the brilliant Italian director Paolo Sorrentino is a breathtaking, Felliniesque tale of decadence and lost love.

142 minutes
Color

5.1 Surround

in Italian

2:35:1 aspect ratio

Criterion Release 2014

Director/Writer

Written by Paolo Sorrentino and Umberto Contarello.

Sorrentino was 43 when he directed The Great Beauty.

The Film

Niente.

The Great Beauty is just that — a great, beautiful film filled with unforgettable images, sounds, and gorgeous cinematography — about something huge which is — after all is said and done — nothing, niente.

This film uses every cinematic trick in the book — smooth, gliding pans, electrifying Felliniesque close-ups — one after another — party people with twisted semi-orgasmic faces …

But it is impossible to talk about this film without a) giving away surprising, even shocking, details and b) you just have to see it for yourself.

It filled with such pleasures — and, as Jep says, quoting Flaubert:

“What I would like to write is a book about nothing, a book without exterior attachments, which would be held together by the inner force of its style, as the earth without support is held in the air — a book that would have almost no subject or at least in which the subject would be almost invisible.”

Sorrentino succeeds beautifully at this. It is a cinematic canvas that falls apart as soon as one begins to try and touch it — it is like the painting by the angry child which transforms itself from a temper tantrum into a multi-million dollar work of art!

It is like the view from Jep’s balcony, as the camera swivels to reveal …

**

Instead of trying to speak of this all, we instead present a transcription of the words in the first music one hears — coming from a group of female singers. It sounds like some old Latin monophonic hymn — but it actually in Yiddish:

Leyg ikh mir in bet arayn

Unlesh mir oys dos fayer
Kumen vet er haynt tsu mir
Der vos iz mire tayer
Banen loyfn tsvey a tog
Eyne kumt in ovnt
Khõher dos klingen Đ glin glin glon
Yo, er iz shoyn noent
Shtundn hot di nakht gor fil
Eyns der tsveyter triber
Eyne iz a fraye nor
Ven es kumt mayn liber
Ikh her men geyt, men klapt in tir,
Men ruft mikh on baym nomen
Ikh loyf arop a borvese
Yo! er iz gekumen!

I lie in bed and turn out the light

My beloved will come today

The trains come twice a day
One comes at night
Hear them clanging -- glin, glin, glon
Yes, he is near
The night has many hours
Each one sadder than the next
Only one is happy when my beloved comes
Someone comes, someone knocks someone calls my name
I turn out barefoot
Yes, he has come.

Film Rating (0-60):

58

The Extras

The Booklet

Featuring an essay by critic Phillip Lopate.

“Sumptuously sensual, crammed with gusto, vitality, spectacle, and invention, The Great Beauty is also a cautionary tale about the heedless pursuit of pleasure. Director Sorrentino pulls out all the stops visually, laying one stunning eye-opening image onto another. But for all this, the film is also, paradoxically, austere and rigorous. How it manages the feat seems partly the result of Sorrentino’s split personality: part showman entranced with the sheer audacity of flimflam, he is also drawn to characters who are highly disciplined, even monklike, in their isolation. Sorrentino has amassed a body of polished, ambitious work that has made him the leading Italian auteur at international film festivals.

The Great Beauty is his best film so far, a culmination of his inquiries into the clash between man as social animal and introvert … it is odd that Sorrentino, who is so accomplished a storyteller, who has such a propulsive, heart-pouding way with montage, with rhythmic combinations of tracks, zooms, pans, close-ups, and crane shots, with the whole bag of cinematic tricks, should also be drawn to the calm emptying out of narrative. But so it is, The Great Beauty succeeds in continually diverting us while questioning our very need for diversion, and bringing us to a rather contemplative place, a serene site whose eternality has acquired, by the end, much more positive connotations.”

Commentary

None

Conversation

Between Sorrentino and Italian cultural critic Antonio Monda.

Admitting the influence of Fellini, of course, he also mentions a poetic book from the 60’s by Raffaele La Capria: Ferito a morte (“The Mortal Wound”) … and Flaubert (see above).

Interview 1

With actor Servillo.

Their fifth film together, director, actor and character worked together with fluid ease.

Interview 2

With screenwriter Contarello.

How well they collaborated.

Deleted scenes

Here one can see what self-discipline Sorrentino had to release the film in a 142-minute version. It could have easily been three hours plus. But it would have been weighed down by plot and exposition, perhaps …

Trailer

One of the best cut trailers. Images tell you what you might expect.

Extras Rating (0-40):

58 + 37

95

By Director
By Spine #