La grande bellezza (The Great Beauty). Paolo Sorrentino (Italy 2013)

When Roger Ebert reviewed Federico Fellini’s La dolce vita, amidst his numerous adroit observations, he deemed it: “a cautionary tale of a man without a center,”  a story about “a handsome, weary, desperate man, who dreams of someday doing something good, but is trapped in a life of empty nights and lonely dawns.” After seeing Paolo Sorrentino’s La grande bellezza, I believe Ebert was prescient. Fellini’s films have marked the history of Italian cinema–if not cinema as a whole–with his oneiric portraits of a decadent high class society, and maintains this legacy in a work of extreme remark, that analogously soars through the niche of modern day Roman aristocracy: bored artists, failed writers, pseudo-intellectuals, opportunist politicians, all enveloped in a choking hypocrisy. La grande bellezza uncovers the farce, the fierce, the fantasy, that should be a “best foreign film” oscar nomination.

I must admit my eyebrow was raised rather high at the cast–most notably, the inclusion of vampy airhead showgirl/actress Sarbina Ferilli, and shoddy B-grade actor Carlo Verdone are enough to make any Italian born cinema lover skeptical if not nervous. But Sorrentino’s cast is meditated and fitting. It goes without saying that Tony Servillo is one of the greatest contemporary actors in Italy, working also with Bellocchio, and Giordana. In this film he stars as writer Jep Gambardella who owns a breathtaking home with a terrace that overlooks the Colosseum. He frequently hosts parties that keep him up long nights. Dancing, drinking, drugs, and lots of “fluffy” conversations in which heavy doses of self-affirming statements are thrown about to dampen the vociferous torture of existential vacuity. Renowned for being the author of a literary masterpiece, Jep is victim of tormented by comments like “why haven’t you written anything else?”–a comment that defines the crux of Fellini’s 8 1/2.  Like Mastroianni in both  8 1/2 and La dolce vita, Jep is the same sort of (anti)hero, who sees through the useless, redundant, and hypocritical self-convictions of his guests and acquaintances, but also perpetuates his own tedious lifestyle. He even has a maid with whom he establishes a familial relationship, someone he confides in. Yet the real dirt he observes in himself as in others never quite gets cleaned up.

With cinematography in which lasciviously ornate baroque rooms is dominated by gold, red, black and white–recalling scenes from Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut (1999)–Sorrentino is not shy about interweaving the sacred with the profane. In fact, the two are not as much intertwined separate features, but are presented as interdependent facets of the same perverse coin. In one scene especially, Sorrentino’s modern day confession booth is instead a “botox booth.” Placed in a circular room of the above mentioned decor, clients anxiously await their turn to receive their daily “silicone communion.” They each spend brief minutes with a charlatan plastic surgeon, who alleviates their worries with programmatic and impersonal words and shot of “aesthetic juice” to lift their spirits. Amongst all clients (for the most part women), a nun, of course, takes part in the ritual.

Religion is exploited and uncovered as one of the many forms of instrumental power. Nothing new. Except, its perverseness reaches absurdity when even a priest–one renowned for his abilities with exorcisms–dodges Jep as he approaches him for spiritual guidance. Ignoring such queries, he much prefers sharing his recipes and cooking techniques: pan fried rabbit is endlessly more sacred than any relationship with God.

Also on the trail of sacrilege, in this film both art and innocence are hijacked. Part of Jep’s circle of friends is a wealthy couple that forces their nine year old daughter to paint in front of a large crowd–a ritual she seems to be known for. At her disposal are a wealth of colored paint buckets to thrown violently against a large-scale blank canvas. She creates what seems to be a wild mess of colors and abstract figures thrown randomly together. She screams as she picks up one bucket after the next with the anger and exhaustion of a child who, as she says “just wants to go to bed like all the other kids.” The audience gasps in awe, as though witnessing a prodigy in the act. Is hers authentic or projected brilliance? Indeed her anger is genuine, as just prior to her performance she screams at her parents that she wants to be a veterinarian and not an artist: Sorrentino has truly thrust us into Alice’s “looking glass.” But being an artist, in the context presented, is an undesirable feat, a path no child dreams about pursuing when it is built on falsity with the sheer goal of preserving reputation. Sorrentino literalizes the common conviction that so much modern art “looks as though a child could have made it.” It is a statement against the elitism and snobbery belonging to those who claim to be connoisseurs.Of course talent is in the eye of the beholder, but being about extremes, this film underscores the perversions of subjectivity. “The great beauty” in and of art is traded with the consumerist attitude that defines it–even childhood is on the market.

And in terms of consumerism, I cannot help but think of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s collection of articles, Scritti Corsari. He wrote fervently about the hedonism that hit the post-economic boom era of the 1950s and 60s as the wave that forever shifted customs and therefore desire, and demand. The pursuit is not that of pleasure, but of an empty and circular thirst for commodities that drive the modern citizen to a circular consumerism. La grande bellezza is a portrait of that kind of extreme in the hands of the wealthy. It is also a portrait of the extremes of the Berlusconian era and its descendants. But I doubt Sorrentino is making a mere political statement. The facets of decadence may be class-specific, but the film philosophically hits the nerve of the human condition and its dangerous distortions once it has reached disproportionate levels of affluence.

What is affluent and runs in abundance, however, is nostalgia. As Romano (Carlo Verdone), one of Jep’s closest friends, reads from his poetry: “Nostalgia. L’unico svago che resta per chi è diffidente verso il futuro” (“Nostalgia: the only distraction left for those who are distrustful of the future”). Nostalgia is a distraction, a deviation, from its own origins–the past is all that is real in the face of a foreseeably monotonous future. The key phrase, “è solo un trucco” (“it is all a trick”), expressed by the character of the magician–who makes a giant giraffe disappear in front of Jep’s eyes–is the film’s ontological statement. Illusion is not an act, it is the foundation of Jep’s reality.