This is Sorrentino’s fifth time in official selection at Cannes and it is definitely his most ambitious film to date. Critics were already describing the film as powerful and elegant. Sorrentino said in the press conference that while he was flattered to be compared to Fellini and La Dolce Vita which is a masterpiece he does not see much of a link. Sorrention said The Great Beauty originated from anecdotes that he had noted and jotted down about life in the city over the years with a view that one day these could form a good basis for a film about Rome in the 21st century. The film is like a summary of life in the city rather than a story.
But the similarities between The Great Beauty and La Dolce Vita make the connection is obvious. The Great Beauty plays very much like an updating of of La Dolce Vita in the era of Berlusconi.
We see the inhabitants of Rome in all their sprawling diversity like the city itself. Sorrentino’s muse and favourite actor, Toni Servillo, is the 65 year old high society journalist Jep Gambardella. That Servillo is meant to be an updated Marcello Mastroianni is never in doubt. He even sports a pair of Mastroianni thick rimmed glasses. Jep meanders through a world of decadent aristocrats and social climbers, politicians and Mafiosi, actors, artists and church officials that make up present day Rome and recall the world of La Dolce Vita. Jep and the other characters populate the cities palaces and villas, parties and gutters in a vision of chaos and spiritual emptiness.
The indolent and disenchanted Jep is clever and urbane. He is accepted at every level of society and spends his time at rooftop parties and among high-flying criminals and doing nothing really very valuable. He wrote a serious novel called The Human Apparatus 40 years ago and has been dining out on it ever since. Now at the age of 65 he looks back over his life and the characters that inhabit the Babylon that makes up his world in present day Rome. Like the city itself the characters seem eternal and have really not changed that much since La Dolce Vita except for aging a bit and their facelifts.
Speaking at the press conference Sorrentino said that one of the biggest differences that sets his film apart from La Dolce Vita is that at this period in Italian history Italy was at the beginning of an economic boom after the war and the outlook was very positive. La Dolce Vita portrays an Italy that is full of hope. The Great Beauty is the portrait of a city that symbolizes missed opportunities.
As Sorrentino said the film film tries to portray a poverty that is not a material poverty but a different kind of poverty but without trying to pass a moral judgment, simply to portray life as it is. Nonetheless Sorrentino has found his place in the tradition of great Italian filmmakers like Fellini and Rossellini with The Great Beauty a sprawling masterpiece of 21st century filmmaking
Credits:
Directed by Paolo Sorrentino
Country: Italy, France
Cast: Toni Servillo, Carol Verdone, Sabrina Ferilli, Carol Buccirosso, Iaia, Forte, Pamela Villoresi, Galatea Ranzi
