The Great Beauty
(2013)
I’m not the greatest Fellini fan. I know Gilliam worships
the guy, and he’s generally praised as one of the masters of European cinema,
but he’s only ever elicited a bit of a shrug. With all the talk of Paulo
Sorrentino’s indebtedness, not least from himself, I’m wondering whether I
should reappraise. Because I really liked The
Great Beauty. On occasion it stammers rather than sashays some of the
recognisable devices and tics of its biggest influence (it’s much better on the
hedonism than the spiritual angst), but more frequently this is a sumptuous
feast for the eyes and ears, anchored by a wonderfully persevering performance
from Toni Servillo.
Servillo’s Jep Gambardello is a cheerfully louche fellow, a
writer who received acclaim early in his career for a single novel (The Human Apparatus) before forsaking
hard graft for an easy life of column writing and socialising. He’s the life
and soul of the party, for whom morning is an unknown object. But on turning 65
he finds himself in reflective mode, as we follow his odyssey through the
streets and habitations and great and not so good of Rome.
It’s a melancholy tale, often a very funny one, and the
whole is beautifully photographed by Lica Bigazzi. This may be a commentary on
the empty vice of Berlusconi-era Italy, but the materialistic decadence of Sorrentino’s
vision is universal. If you needed proof of the Fellini-ness of it all, look
out for the little people (also one of Gilliam’s recurrent obsessions) and
nuns. It’s in through the embrace of the mannerisms of European art cinema that
Sorrentino finds his breadth of vision, unfettered by a typical narrative
structure (although less off the wall than the previous year’s Holy Motors).
He has a lot of fun
playing with conventions, taking pokes at pretensions both artistic (“I’m an artist. I don’t need to explain Jack
Shit” offers Talia Concept, whose pubic hair is adorned with the hammer and
sickle and who runs head first into a wall; her boyfriend covers basket balls
with confetti; “He’s sensational”)
and political (Jep blithely eviscerates Stefania’s claim to authenticity, while
taking comfort in his own self-aware lack of the same). There’s the banal mirth
at the expense of the botox queues (a woman informs the operating professor she
has just come back from India; “I had
amazing dysentery”). And did you know, the Ethiopian jazz scene is the only
interesting one today? Conversely, the sight of middle-aged and above types larging
it to modern dance tunes is oddly beguiling rather than off-putting (Lele
Marchitelli’s music choices are exceptional throughout). As much as he is
critiquing the vacuity, Sorrentino is celebrating it.
Reflecting Jep’s increasing thoughts of mortality, his
journey takes a more sombre path. The daughter of an old friend (armed with
erudite flippancy at all times, Jep asks “Why
did you have to call her Ramona?”), an ageing stripper, attracts his platonic interest, which is
a change for him, and he appears to be mentoring her for a while. But she holds
her own darkness, and his tutoring in the etiquette of funeral ceremonies sees
him breaking the number one rule (he starts sobbing). Even there, Sorrentino’s
wicked sense of humour breaks through, as the wife of an attendee protests “Your back!” when he reluctantly
volunteers to bear the casket.
And he throws curveballs too; there’s much dissection of art
and talent. Good friend Romano (Carlo Verdone) becomes disenchanted by a city
that has used him; he lacks the talent to create, or the looks to attract
ladies. Unlike Jep, to whom everything comes easy but who has coasted on unused
talent, the city has disappointed him; it is all veneer and no depth, and when
depth is demanded there is only hostility (“You’ve
written a pile of shit”, dismisses the woman to whom he has enslaved
himself).
Then there’s the young girl proclaimed as a painting prodigy; we
think this is going to be another piss-take of the shallow elite, until we
realise that she really is talented (Jep
may or may not be missing the point when he responds to the suggestion that she
was crying with “Nonsense, that girl
earns millions”). The only problem is she wants to be a vet (it isn’t clear
if her cries are rage at parents co-opting her into performance art or this is
actually a part of her performance art).
Jep is attentive only to the enriched domain over which he
presides, such that he is unaware of one of the world’s ten most wanted men
living on his doorstep. And he is surprised by an acquaintance’s revelation
that the girl who left him when they were teenagers saw him as his great love. In
part it this that reignites his reflection and spurs him on. But the quest for
spiritual answers finds Sorrentino on lumpier ground; a food-obsessed exorcist
appears to confirm that the religious establishment has nothing of importance
to say, while a sister known as “The Saint” shuts down requests for an
interview with “I took a vow of poverty,
and you cant talk about poverty. You have to live it”. Whether or not it is
intended, her genuine depth (she can talk to flamingos) comes across as glibly
as Jep’s world.
Perhaps this is because Sorrentino has set himself up to
address the imponderables. And you wonder if he does so because that’s what
Fellini would do (à la La Dolce Vita),
rather than because he is genuinely asking those questions.
Sorrentino may not have that much to say about the greater
mysteries, only questions, so these themes arise more provocatively when he
doesn’t attempt to give voice to them. When the content is purely visual. Jep’s
final monologue fins him apparently inspired to write again by the truth of the
recognition of love itself, from all those years ago, something at odds with
the superficiality he has embraced and hidden behind for so long. But
Sorrentino’s film delights in the journey rather than the destination; it may
be an irony that Jep’s realisation is limited (after all, he does not deal with
what lies beyond), or maybe the understanding he comes to is intended as both a release and a restriction.
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