Fellini once said that no critic writing about a film could say more than the film itself. This is especially true of TheGreat Beauty , a film comprised almost exclusively of sumptuous visuals and little else. I quote Fellini because of all the marvellous odes composed to him so far, this is the most felliniesque . The film begins with a Japanese tourist literally overdosing (and falling unconscious) due to the beauty of the Roman skyline. This is a good indication of the movie that is to follow.
Jep Gambardella wrote one novel in his early twenties that cemented his reputation. He has written nothing since and is now more famous for being famous and knowing all the famous. Witty and charming, he is the idiomatic life of a party. His nights are spent invariably drinking and dancing. The one question others constantly ask him is why he didn’t write another book. The answer he finally gives is that he postponed it in the search of the great beauty.
Fellini also said that life is a combination of magic and pasta. The extraordinary and the trivial. Jep is a man who is constantly searching for the inexhaustible meaning and mystery of life, but having grown weary in his search, tucks into the delicious ennui of the pasta instead. There are poignant moments that the film offers to us and Jep but these are few and far between. For the most part, life remains miserable, inscrutable and meaningless and the best Jep can do is to joke and get drunk. But it is a sensuous and pleasurable state (if somewhat fragile) and on the whole not such a bad bargain.
Twice Jep mentions Gustave Flaubert, who wanted to write a book about nothing and failed. The trouble with language is that the word is separable from its meaning. Saussure and Deridda have built entire careers out of this. In cinema, the image and its meaning are inseparable and simultaneous. Perhaps that is why Sorrentino has succeeded where Flaubert failed.
Sorrentino has the camera and through its lens paints one of cinema’s most magnificent portraits of a city and a time. The Berlusconi era has only recently come to an end and it will be chiefly remembered (at least overseas) for extravagant and opulent bunga bunga parties. It is ultimately a portrait of a city wallowing in its decadence and decline, of botoxed and bronzed seniors closing in on death enjoying endless nights out —The kind of excess that would put even Trimalchio to shame.
TheGreat Beauty was screened at Woodlands on Wednesday. If you missed it, then you have the option of buying it on Blu-ray. Nearly every frame is ripe with colour and sartorial elan, and I can imagine few films looking better.
