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The Great Beauty (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray + DVD]
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Reviews & Ratings
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Ciro Discepolo
22-07-2025Collapsed in my armchair, with a few people around me, I have greatly enjoyed the latest masterpiece by Paolo Sorrentino and Tony Servillo whom it would not be an exaggeration to call the Coen brothers of Italian cinema, such is their harmony when they work together and permeate each other.I had an inkling that it was a great movie even when some friends stated: “ ... Yes, beautiful... a little slow… maybe Fellinian”.The countless references to the great Federico were more than due: not too many but perhaps too few.The story begins with the birthday of Gep Gambardella, in one of those parties in contemporary Rome that could be defined as a “cast by Fellini” as Woody Allen would say: a total mess, a jumble of undefined and screaming genres, suffering from delirium tremens fuelled by cocaine, heroin and alcohol, that added only bad taste to the orgies of Caligula.A mixture of Jurassic masks of cheesy humanity willing to sacrifice everything at the altar of appearance, in a mix of genders and genres, social classes, physical and mental horrors, where the only recognizable glue is an extreme form of kitsch.We see the princes Colonna of Calabria who are hired for a fee at dinners, the cardinals who should speak of God but dispense recipes of browned rabbits simmered with mint and fennel, a beautiful woman stripping off to pay for the treatment against the disease that will eat her up soon, an army of idlers busy doing nothing, intellectual women who have written the history of the Party, but who are best known for their work in the restrooms of the University.Everything is phoney, everything is fake, it is the festival of appearance, of boredom, of not doing anything. It is a long advertisement to smoking, drinking, drugs and especially to the display of many little and enormously monstrous egos in search of impossible identities.It is not possible to compare these scenes with those of three other historical films: ‘Roma’ and ‘La Dolce Vita’ (The Sweet Life) by the great Federico Fellini, and Woody Allen’s pathetic spot (To Rome with Love) justified only by the fact that he wasn’t given much money to shoot the film (but could he compete, on this field, with Fellini and Sorrentino? However, Woody Allen is still one of my favourite directors).Not to mention, however, even the beautiful ‘Caro Diario’ (Dear Diary) by Nanni Moretti and some scenes in the catacombs in Liliana Cavani’s ‘Al di là del bene e del male’ (Beyond Good and Evil).In ‘La dolce vita’ the great Fellini shows us a seemingly happy and radiant humanity in convertible sports cars and improbable night dives in the Trevi fountain: this is only the ‘desktop’ of a mythical world of wretches looking for a role but condemned to immense solitude.Evocative , sometimes wonderful, mysterious, age-old and always true magic – on the other hand – is Federico Fellini’s ‘Roma’, whose traces abound in ‘The great beauty’ by Paolo Sorrentino, that also gives us an extraordinary, perhaps the most valuable in absolute, database of images of the beautiful capital. It is surreal, dream-like, always depicted shortly after dawn, where the protagonist is finally alone to enjoy more than two thousand years of history, culture, art and civilization, having abandoned jugglers-monsters who pretend to live and strive to convince others that they are not dead yet.Tony Servillo “is reborn” on the day of his 65th birthday: he tries to ask questions, starts to have curiosities and looks in the higher ranks of the Church for an answer that cannot be given because the Cardinals are busy saying platitudes and dispense recipes.Then he goes back to his innocence when he was eighteen years old and deflowered by an angel girl of twenty who then left him. After that he could no longer pursue that dream and was lost in a worldliness of nothingness.Striking and impressive is the reference to a probable Mother Teresa, who is the only character who does not speak but climbs on her knees on the steps of a staircase that never ends:“I only eat a few roots because roots are important”.A great Sorrentino, certainly one of the greatest glories of contemporary cinema.Ciro Discepolo
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Nicholas C. Triolo
22-07-2025We first meet Jep Gambardella, given life by the brilliant Tony Servillo (Gomorrah, Sorrentino’s Il Divo), at a Berlusconi-esque bacchanal. He has realized his youthful ambition, to be “the king of the high life” in the Eternal City. His home overlooks the Coliseum at its best angle. Rome is a giant candy jar for him—and much more: it is his stage, his dreamscape, his prison, his aging process reflected—it is a serpentine, cocaine-fueled conga train in the achingly early hours; a train leading nowhere.Once, many years ago, he wrote a successful novel, The Human Apparatus, whose title and contents are impossibly pretentious, according to a fellow socialite and frequent critic. Gambardella, secure in his wealth and social status, takes her prodding with affected, chuckling indifference; but when pushed further, he steps out of the role of gentleman and verbally eviscerates his critic, calmly exploding her narrative of her own personal and professional success. She leaves the gathering in tears.In another scene, Gambardella visits an old acquaintance who manages a strip club. The man, awed by the presence of such a famous public figure, rambles about his drug use and laments what a loser he is for having to stay awake until 6 a.m. every night at age seventy. Gambardella listens with attention and compassion. Later in the film, he meditates upon his own nocturnal routine, finding little of value in the endless soirées that turn inevitably into long, debauched affairs. Yet he is clearly attached to the lifestyle they represent.Sorrentino is showing us the emptiness of life as a certain kind of Roman elite. Tonally and stylistically, his film is entirely different from Martin Scorsese’s contemporary The Wolf of Wall Street, but both touch upon a certain deep vein of unhappiness and darkly comic absurdity in the lives of the amoral ultra-wealthy. Both directors are enamored of the spectacle of excess as an almost transcendent force. But the comparison should end there, out of respect for both films and their widely divergent ambitions.Is Gambardella’s life completely empty, debauched, irredeemable? No. He is a thoughtful man who endlessly wrestles to brook the contradictions within himself, to uncover the treasures in his past that will reassemble his shattered romantic soul, even as he remains suave, acerbic, self-deprecating, utterly unflappable in his public life. Through his eyes, and Sorrentino’s, we see the immense beauty of Rome: Rome as a place outside of time, in images of its Renaissance-era glories shrouded in darkness, of a drug-addled partygoer staring in awe at planes’ jet trails streaking through the pre-dawn sky; Rome as a thoroughfare bridging Europe and the tropics, suggested by the haunting apparition of a migrating flock of flamingos alighting on Gambardella’s terrace, and a giraffe (a magician’s prop) adorning the scene of a bitter parting; Rome as a place where a central paradox of Italy, and a timeless theme of humanity, plays out: the tension between the profane and the sacred, the conflicting desires to adore, celebrate, and idolize the human body and to hide it in shame, punish it, and deny its passions with spiritual poverty.There is a rich tapestry here, and moments of enduring poignancy. There are many superlative performances, among them Giovanna Vignola as Jep’s energetic editor, the closest thing he has to a peer and a companion; and Carlo Verdone as the significantly named Romano, a struggling artist and close friend of Jep’s. The soundtrack and score are their own presence, and provide much of the film’s emotional power in dynamic relation with the cinematography. There are vignettes, characters whose arcs last seconds and leave the viewer with bizarre and lingering impressions to interpret. This is a film fully realized, and, like the warm, ephemeral memories it calls up in Jep’s most vulnerable moments, like the ancient foundations of the Forum, its imprint will not fade fast. It will inspire its viewers to write books and make films: not motivated by jealousy at the singular accomplishment of its creators, but by its affirmation of the bounties of the world and the tragedies of our time.
Technical Specifications
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 cafes to find Rome itself, in all it's 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 (GOMORRAH), this transporting experience by the brilliant Italian director Paolo Sorrentino (IL DIVO) is a breathtaking Fellini-esque tale of decadence and lost love.
