Paolo Sorrentino
La grande bellezza

First of all, I must say that this review will be full of spoilers, so if you haven't seen the film, read at your own risk.

"The Great Beauty" has already been discussed at length, aided by its victory at the Golden Globes, which have sealed its international success. Loved and praised (especially by the public), hated and destroyed (especially by critics), this film is clearly destined for a troubled life. Is it a masterpiece or gold-plated manure? As often happens, the truth lies somewhere in between. Yet, that is not enough to express the true peculiarity of this film. Because if "in media stat virtus", this time even within that "middle," you can ask whether the glass is half empty or half full. And you'll never get to the bottom of it. Isn't it amusing?

But let's leave the easy lexical baroque behind, as Sorrentino has already taken care of the redundancy. "The Great Beauty," let's say it right away, is as stylistically refined as it is lacking in substance. The director, more verbose than ever, displays one-dimensional characters, masks placed there solely to be judged by the sharp tongue of the bored Jep, or by the director's own camera. As someone has already said, even the dialogues in this film are monologues. Caricatures upon caricatures come and go on the scene, and it's pointless to list them because the only ones missing are the Neapolitan pizza maker and the gondolier with the mandolin.

And through Jep and supporting characters, our beloved director speaks, judges, criticizes. Nothing escapes his eye, and as is fitting for a true Italian, he passes judgment on everything and everyone. Thus, the beautiful shots, stripped of their meaning, are reduced to pure artifice and nothing else. The stifling vision of the author is consistently highlighted by a script that lovingly takes us by the hand - as one does with children or the mentally challenged - to guide us step by step within the puzzle he has created. The screenplay is therefore full of explanatory dialogues, summarizing notes aimed at always providing the right key to understanding the work. Heaven forbid the great director be misunderstood! No, Sorrentino is (or believes himself to be) a great author, and it's only fair that even us deficient individuals have the opportunity to understand, without fail, his point of view on every single aspect of this deeply degraded society.

But the funny thing is that "The Great Beauty" thrives precisely on the things left unsaid, on the glimpses of life shown, the directorial choices. I really liked the sea in the sky, the moon turning into an airplane, the gaze of the girl with whom Jep will sleep for the first time, placed there at the end of the film. Because, as everyone knows, the capital-F Female, even if she looks at you for a second, sometimes it feels like she's revealing the meaning of the universe. In short, the film works as long as the director stays quiet and lets us quietly enjoy the images. Problems arise when the characters start talking. The screenplay is indeed often disjointed, if not downright annoying. I could mention the scene with the child lost by her mother, which is simply there to tell Jep that he's "nobody." Okay, but who cares, right? What happens next? Where does that scene lead? I could mention the ending with the "saint" and the flamingos (yes, flamingos) where the old woman talks about the importance of roots in a film where not once is there a reference to family or homeland as a value (in fact, Jep-Sorrentino himself will forget everything at the end). I could mention Romano who, saying goodbye to his lifelong friend, admits he's leaving the city because "Rome has disappointed me." No, Mr. Verdone, Rome didn't disappoint you; the way your character was written disappointed me. I mean, he leaves Rome just as he's starting to have a bit of success after a life of sacrifices, and why does he do it? Because he was with a tramp. But being a man of great moral stature and philosophical depth, he can't admit that he was with a tramp, no, he has to leave because Rome... Rome has disappointed him. Yes.

And the film goes on, again and again, between things said too much and others said poorly, between easy feel-good sentiment and pathetic moralism. Sorrentino, as the bored bourgeois he is, presents us with a disenchanted protagonist who lashes out against the marginalized (the conceptual artist who hears "vibrations," the "girl who makes millions") in the same way as with the "drinkable Rome." But he also presents us with a protagonist so ridiculous in his fake pain that in the final conclusion one is truly tempted to ask, "What the hell is he going to write about in his next book?" In fact, the long-awaited and foretold spiritual elevation, the experience the protagonist should live to regain literary inspiration, does not manifest in any way. Perhaps the scene in which the "saint" climbs the stairs in suffering is supposed to depict Jep's personal growth? Perhaps. Personally, I find the parallelism exceedingly forced and awkwardly rendered. Like the entire film, for that matter. Thus, in the end, we learn that our hero will start writing a new book, but we will never know what truly drove him to do so. The reason we'll never know is that, at this point, it seems obvious to me, not even the director knows. Sorrentino tries, he really wants us to believe that his Jep has reached a turning point (but when? where? and why?) while in reality, he hasn't gone any further than poor Marcello in "La Dolce Vita." The most profound difference with Fellini's masterpiece - forgive me if I venture into it myself - is that despite his egocentricity, Fellini was at least honest until the end. Sorrentino, on the other hand, ended up selling you smoke passed off as sublime art. And he knows it. Oh, if he knows it.

So why not say that "The Great Beauty" is a heap of crap and leave it at that? Because I would be insincere. The peculiarity of the film lies in its being a true paradox transported onto celluloid. Why do I say this? Here's why: The film relies on a sumptuous mise-en-scène, no denying it, but it also expresses the thoughts of a mediocre author, incapable of giving his characters their own life. And this mediocre author has depicted a mediocre character (Jep) who is tasked with judging the mediocrity of mundane life. Do you see?

This is why you end up being convinced or even won over by the result, because who better than a mediocre author can speak of mediocrity? Who better than a rhetorical moralist who points the finger at everything and everyone without having anything better to say, can depict the emptiness of existence and be so believable? That's why, paradoxically, the film has succeeded. It is a film sincere in at least one aspect: in that it deals with nothingness with a language that suits it. Pretentious, baroque, shiny but lacking true depth. As empty as nothingness, this film is both its mirror and its most sincere face. A perfectly successful declaration of intent, therefore.

"In the end, it's just a trick, yes, it's just a trick."