La grande bellezza, The Great Beauty (Paolo Sorrentino 2014): Italy

Reviewed by Cornelia Eriksson at Santa Barbara International Film Festival, 2014.

Except that they have created one of the world’s most important history, is a world leader in food and fashion industry, Italy has now proved that they know how to make award-winning movies.

“La grande bellezza” (The Great Beauty) is this beautiful story about nothing and everything. Or as the director Paolo Sorrentino says in the director’s panel at Santa Barbara International Film Festival, “We wanted to do a movie about everything, but we ended up doing a movie about nothing”.

The story is about Jep Gambardella  (Toni Servillo) whose fortune is built on a successful novel he once wrote. He is surrounded by epic parties, marvelous environments and important people. As the story moves forward we get to follow him and we soon realize his great desire to find the meaning of life. While he is trying to enjoy his present he constantly continues to look back at his past.

This reminds me of when I wrote the review of “The Great Gatsby”. I closely described the milieu, the cinematography and all the artistic aspects but when I would write about the plot I got stuck. “The Great Beauty” is also full of underlying meanings and there is a lot of things to say about the visual content but nothing about the actual story.

It is obvious that the creators of “The Great Beauty” have been inspired by “The Great Gatsby”, which happen to be my favorite movie. They are both dreamlike masterpieces that focuses on the beauty and sadness of the past love. Using large party scenes, over saturated  backgrounds, orchestral music and philosophical dialogs I believe Buz Luhrman/Jack Clayton and Paolo Sorrentino want to create the illusion of a man living in an abundant life. Not only do Jay Gatsby and Jep Gambardella have the same “JG” initials, they are both very similar in personality. Jay and Jep is two gentlemen that does everything out of love and all they do is thinking about their lost love.

Festival de Cannes “The Great Beauty” 2014                Festival de Cannes “The Great Gatsby” 2013

Enough about comparing these two movies. “The Great Beauty” is a fascinating movie that reflects life and love in a beautiful way. It’s definitely open for own interpretations and it is in your head where the story unfolds. “The Great Gatsby” has been my favorite movie for a very long time but after seeing “The Great Beauty” I am no longer sure about that.