beauty

It’s difficult to articulate what a film like THE GREAT BEAUTY is about, since it’s the sort of story that is about everything and nothing all at once.

The back of the dvd box might tell you that it’s about a writer named Jep, and his reflections on the world following his 65th birthday. That’s what the film is about, but not what it’s about. The film is about so many of the most important things in life; food, sex, art, love, restlessness, perspective, religion, regret, and death. The film is visually splendid, making the people in it, and the city they move about look so. fucking. good.

It utilizes both cheeky imagery, and sharp dialogue to paint a picture of the sort of quiet unrest and disillusionment we reach as the years pass and we begin to question what we have done with our lives. For the characters in this film, every regret brings great weight, every missed question carries high stakes. They are still trying to make sense of their lives, even though much of their time on earth is easily behind them. I spent much of this screening wearing a goofy grin as it washed over me with wry philosophy.

With Jep and many of his friends being writers, there is much time spent on the nature of writing and what it hopes to achieve. At one point, it points out a poet who doesn’t speak. We’re told that he doesn’t speak, because he listens. It lead me to wonder how many writers truly listen, as opposed to formulating their opinions and mapping out their written words midstream? Later, another character puts a point on what the end result of much of the world’s writing is. He says that “when we write, we give life to fantasies, imagination, and lies”. Two thoughts on writing. Two ends of the spectrum. One film.

Did I also mention that the film has a 104-year-old nun, nobility-for-hire, a disappearing giraffe, a conceptual artist who runs into walls, a man with the keys to the most beautiful places in Rome, and a flock of flamingos?

THE GREAT BEAUTY comes from the same team that brought the world IL DIVO, and while many parts of it may seem “very arty Italian”, I counter that these flourishes are what make it so memorable and delightful. Jep lives in a place we’d all like to live, leading a life we’d all like to call our own. He begins his story at a party that Jay Gatsby would call “too much”, and ends it on peaceful cliffs at the seaside. There’s a metaphor in that: how somewhere between the raging party and the quiet shore is where we all want to be.