The apex of the Janiculum and the Fontana dell’Acqua Paola constitute the backdrop of the sacred and the profane, which in The Great Beauty concern those inhabitants of the city of Rome. This location of the opening scene has as its precedent the Trevi Fountain, to which the film La Dolce Vita brought not only renown but notoriety. While the latter film brought to the world the vision of Fellini and of Roman squalor, The Great Beauty achieves something more meditative and interior than its predecessor; artful and mordant, La Dolce Vita created a social critique that The Great Beauty, using characterization and lively dialogue, subordinates to the quest of its protagonist. This quest leads to answers that are moving not because they solve the puzzles of human existence, but because they refuse to do so. A product of integrity, the film exhibits a dauntless interest in the problems of human existence without becoming disingenuous and contrived. Even its pretensions are knowing and weary.
The Great Beauty is a delight for its formal qualities, its music, and its dialogue, all of which contribute to the exploration of the sacred and the profane, and the search for meaning in the character of Jep Gambardella. And Rome glisters as the center of human struggle.
The beauty of the photography in The Great Beauty is entrancing. The cinematographer, Luca Bigazzi, combines beautiful traveling and static shots to depict the spaciousness of Rome, and the ancient splendor pervading the modern city. The camerawork of a scene has a style that works with space, contributing to an “appealing hybrid of free-floating God’s-eye omniscience and feet-on-the-ground, unfailingly centered vision,” all of which Marco Grosoli of Film Comment notices in the oeuvre of the director, Paolo Sorrentino.[1] From this amalgam of spaciousness and earthliness derives the freewheeling pace of the story, which alternates daytime scenes in the life of protagonist with the nighttime whirling of the beau monde; the pace, more mosaic than that of the traditional plot, often seems in keeping with the disorder of a modernist novel. To those with patience and a sensitivity to the luscious traveling shots and sumptuous urban excess, the cinematography will be a moving tribute to the city of Rome.
The only moving shot of the film occurs with the closing credits, and it is stunning; the camera drifts for a number of minutes down the Tiber, moving beneath bridges and observing the various life that teems within the frame. It is a lasting glimpse of the melancholy beauty of an aging Rome, and of the poignancy and desolation of its inhabitants.
Emphasizing the supernal beauty is the music, which recurs in a few variations and accompanies the emotions and revelations of a character, Jep Gambardella. Having experienced the nightlife and the welter of sounds that dominate a rooftop bacchanal, Jep strolls through Rome, basking in daylight and the guileless minutiae that it has to offer. Complementing this plot that alternates between the sacred and the profane, the music likewise alternates between the boisterous syncopation of the nightlife and the beautiful, contemplative gentleness of the daylight.
The interludes of pathos following Jep Gambardella as he strolls elicit music that is euphonious and moving, the primary music during such interludes being the “The Beatitudes,” composed by Vladimir Martynov and performed by the Kronos Quartet. Every such interlude recalls the emotions of an age that Jep has experienced, that dwell still in Rome as mementos returning in the form of an acquaintance, an elaborate artwork, or serendipity. And “The Beatitudes” attaches not only to Jep but to others: a countess as she experiences nostalgia for relics that are no more; a wizened debauchee and owner of a strip club, Egidio, mourning the death of his daughter; and Rome as the camera drifts along the Tiber observing this cultural mecca whose former glory still exists in its monuments, as well as its people.
The counterpoise of the plot, alternating between hubbub and stillness, parallels the music whose alternations are much the same; but the dialogue, exhibiting this same counterpoise, enriches the complexity of the film by exploring the values of the sacred and the profane.
Having a panache and depth that is always artful, that dialogue can seem at certain moments self-regarding, decadent with its own elaborate horseplay. But whatever its excesses, it always pleases the ear, serving to deepen the story by containing both the hubbub and the stillness that characterize the structure of the film, while delving into the Roman dichotomy of the sacred and the profane. Indoors at the first rooftop scene of the story, as a man and a woman air their ambitions, the former says, “I’m starring in two TV dramas…I’m playing a pope in one and a junkie on the road to recovery in the other,” and the dichotomy of his roles is the sacred and the profane, one instance of the many pervading the film. But the Roman dilemma is the reconciling of the two extremes, as each threatens to overwhelm the other.
Much of the dialogue in the film remains quotable and lucid. One instance of such dialogue occurs after a character, Viola, having listened to the pretension of a colleague on the familiar rooftop, answers that “the Ethiopian jazz scene is the only interesting one today”; another occurs when Jep, after hearing the diatribe of a haughty colleague, Stefania, says of Flaubert, “Do you know Flaubert wanted to write a book about nothing? If he’d met you, we’d have had a great book, what a shame!”; and another when Romano says in monologue, “what’s wrong with feeling nostalgic? It’s the only distraction left for those who’ve no faith in the future!” The dialogue, cleaving to the story whose structure continues to alternate between sacred and profane, retains its liveliness and novelty even when it becomes philosophical (and pseudo-philosophical–for it is both impressive and imperfect).
Experiencing this dichotomy as the context of his plight, Jep Gambardella wallows as the intermediary of the two, acceding to neither the sacred nor the profane; his radical indecisiveness is the result of a skepticism that is inseparable from his character. His dialogue reveals this: having heard that Jep may return to writing, Romano asks, “has something happened?” and Jep merely answers, “something always happens in Rome. Nothing’s happened.” Showing sincere interest in spiritual problems, and even willing to broach them with Cardinal Bellucci, Jep nonetheless hesitates to accord anything the status of an authority; although he wants to believe that religion has answers, he cannot bring himself to do it, and although he has long reveled in the decadence of his high life, he understands that it is malnourishing.
Framing this mediation between the sacred and the profane, the quotes that bookend the film provide both the question and the answer. The answer, being provisional and limited, is moving because it contains only possibility, eschewing overt philosophy or existential woolgathering; the solution to the Jep’s plight is that there is no answer, but only possible answers, and it acknowledges human limitation as the incurable condition.
In his book The Trouble with Being Born, Emil Cioran, a supreme and often euphoric pessimist, an irrepressible skeptic, writes in that vein: “Extraordinary and null—these two adjectives apply to the sexual act, and, consequently, to everything resulting from it, to life first of all,”[2] probing an indecision and indeterminacy that are in keeping with the indecision and murkiness of Jep’s plight in The Great Beauty. Innate to the character of Jep is the notion of possible nihilism, possible meaninglessness, coexisting with the meaning and beauty of life, and he cannot evade this incurable condition of his doubt. Jep’s plight is the timeless plight of the secular man, intelligent, rational, unwilling to believe what he should believe in order to be happy, but knowing that human existence is more profound than he can ever know.
Containing the words “our journey is entirely imaginary,” the initial quote from Céline sets the precedent of this doubt; and the final scene of the film, in voice-over, contains the affirmation from Jep that life may be “just a trick,” a mesh of beauty and squalor, meaninglessness and possibility, which we must seize, if it is to be anything at all.
This conclusion is not profound, because it answers nothing; but by precluding the possibility of an answer and affirming the spiritual resilience of a man, it inspirits and provides the sustenance that art and beauty have always promised. For while the answers may elude us, the questions will always remain. And art has never hesitated to pose the essential questions.
- Marco Grosoli. “Review: The Great Beauty,” filmcomment.com, November-December 2013, https://www.filmcomment.com/article/review-the-great-beauty-sorrentino/ ↑
- Cioran, E.M. The Trouble with Being Born. Editions Gallimard, 1973. ↑
