Sunday, January 5, 2014

La Grande Bellezza (2013) Directed by Paolo Sorrentino


*Disclaimer*
This review is likely to be extremely biased considering that:
1.) It is Italian.
2.)I am Italian.



In La Grande Bellezza, director Paolo Sorrentino returns to Italy to tell the story of the aging king of Roman high-society, Jep Gambardella. We are introduced to Jep on his 65th birthday, a huge, Gatsby-style bash on a rooftop overlooking Rome, with people of all ages shimmying to synthetic club beats. (I'd just like to say, Jep's entrance to the movie is perfection, as seen below)



Jep is a renowned journalist and one-time author. He wrote The Human Apparatus in his youth, which received much acclaim, but never wrote another novel. He's spent the rest of his life searching for "la grande bellezza", or a great beauty, that would inspire him to write another work, but he has never found it.

Sorrentino tells his story in a very non-linear fashion. The scenes jump from place to place and time to time without much context or explanation, and it's up to the audience to figure out what's happening, so that in some places I got a little lost. But the juxtaposition between scenes is so well done: a booming, electrifying party scene will cut to a slow, quiet, beautifully shot scene like that, without any kind of transition, but it works, and it highlights the pace of Jep's life.

The aspect that was so striking about this movie were the moments of such pure beauty that would appear unexpectedly, and disappear just as fast. In Jep's words, "The haggard, inconsistent splashes of beauty." These were moments of the great beauty that Jep was looking for, and yet he could not see them as he lived them, only we, the audience, the tourists of the movie, would notice them. 



Part of the charm of the movie for me was the Italian personality it had. There was just an atmosphere to it that was incredibly different than American movies. The pace was so relaxed, the scenes not contrived, the humor, the characters, it felt so foreign, but good. There was something about reading the subtitles but having the Italian voices behind them; Italians speak with such passion and rhythm and expression, it really enhanced the lines. The actor, Toni Servillo, who played Jep, was genius. His face, all lined and old but still so expressive, it was really disarming. He was almost like a philosophical Italian Bill Murray. 

The soundtrack to this movie is still stuck in my head; it oscillates between heavy dance beats and ethereal violin and choral pieces, again reflecting the tone of the movie. My favorite tracks:




To be honest, I'm finding it so hard to review this movie because 1.) I loved it so much and I can't quite put why into words, and 2.) I didn't really understand it. It's not the sort of movie you really get the first time through, because it's so purely about life, and in the same vein, not really about anything. The whole package just creates this ineffable feel to the movie, of beauty and relaxation and pulsing life everywhere you look, of timelessness. It was my favorite movie of the year, and I plan on watching it many more times. All I can say is that if you have patience and an open mind, this movie is something you NEED to watch. I couldn't even stop watching during the credits, when the camera simulated a boat ride down the Tiber river as violin music played and names scrolled past. It was beautiful in every aspect of the word, and abstract at the same time. 














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