The Great Beauty: Paolo Sorrentino's Poetic Meditation on Existence, Mortality, and Meaning
The Great Beauty follows Jep Gambardella, a 65-year-old journalist and once-promising novelist who has lived in Rome for decades. Jep spent most of his life living lavishly and partying with the city's high society, establishing himself as the "king of the high life." Now in his later years, Jep finds himself confronting the emptiness of his extravagant lifestyle and meditating on love, loss, and the fleeting nature of beauty and pleasure.
On his 65th birthday, Jep looks back on his life and relationships, including his enduring love for a woman named Elisa who left him long ago. He wanders through lavish nightclubs, opulent mansions, historic landmarks, and debauched parties, encountering various characters along the way - a 104 year-old living saint, a stripper, a dying Cardinal, and more. All the while, Jep grapples with his place in Rome's decadent high society and struggles to find deeper meaning and inspiration as he faces his waning youth and the specter of mortality.
Sorrentino's film offers a meditation on Rome's timeless, fading splendor and one man's crisis of faith in confronting life's ephemeral nature. With vivid cinematography and surreal dream sequences, The Great Beauty studies Jep's spiritual and existential journey through the ruin and angst beneath Rome's gorgeous surface and dizzying excess.
As I was watching this film I was reminded of Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation and the interesting parallels between Jep Gambardella's relationship with Ramona and Bill Murray's relationship with Scarlet Johansson.
In both films, the central male character is experiencing an existential crisis and ennui, numb to the pleasures of fame, wealth, and hedonism. Disconnected from the superficial world around them, they find an unlikely emotional bond with an "ordinary" woman who sees through their success to the vulnerability within.
Ramona and Scarlett Johansson's character offer consolation, insight and friendship as the men grapple with the fleeting nature of life. Their relationships are intimate yet platonic, based on authentic connection rather than physical passion.
The most striking moments in The Great Beauty unfold in the interactions between Jep and Sister Maria, whose saint-like devotion contrasts sharply with the world around her. These scenes, particularly memorable, include the dinner where Jep engages with his ostentatious friends, the quiet interlude on a balcony graced by flamingos, and the powerful image of Sister Maria ascending the holy steps of the Scala Sancta on her knees.
As Sister Maria slowly ascends the Scala Sancta step by step, the echoes of her struggle reverberate Jep's own anguished efforts to recapture his lost promise as an artist. Her lifelong commitment to faith highlights Jep's spiritual lack. While she exemplifies constancy, Jep personifies restless dissolution.
When Sister Maria asks Jep what he has been searching for, his answer - "the great beauty" has symbolic import. Throughout the film, Jep grapples with the superficiality around him and questions the meaning of his experiences and culture. This quest for "great beauty" represents a deeper existential search for authenticity and meaning in a world that often lacks both.
Jep's response to Sister Maria underscores his inner turmoil regarding unrealized potential and the human need to find beauty and meaning. This turmoil and existential angst is expressed by Jep when he says:
This is how it always ends … with death. But first there was life, hidden beneath the blah, blah, blah … It is all settled beneath the chitter chatter and the noise. Silence and sentiment. Emotion and fear. The haggard, inconstant splashes of beauty, and then the wretched squalor and miserable humanity. All buried under the cover of the embarrassment of being in the world. Beyond there is what lies beyond. I don’t deal with what lies beyond. Therefore let this novel begin. After all, it’s just a trick. Yes, it’s just a trick.
The film invites the audience to contemplate these complexities of life, art, and the search for purpose. May we contemplate the question that Sister Maria ask Jep, “Do you know why I only eat roots? […] Because roots are important. The answer may not be as obvious as we think.
Music plays a profound role in the aesthetic and emotional landscape of Paolo Sorrentino's The Great Beauty establishing mood and atmosphere through a diverse range of classical, sacred, and electronic works. Prominent use of melancholic sacred pieces by Gorecki, Pärt, and Vladimir Martynov evoke spirituality, solemnity, and introspection, underscores Jep’s existential reflections. Prominent use of Gorecki's Symphony No. 3 hauntingly aligns with Jep's sorrow, while Pärt's Spiegel im Spiegel poetically scores a nostalgic reunion. Martynov's The Beatitudes highlights the contrast between earthly pleasures and spiritual redemption. The wide range of musical styles reflects the complexity of influences on Jep's generation and his inner conflict. Ultimately the film's masterful incorporation of music illuminates its themes of life, death, and the search for divine meaning.
Lastly, Jep Gambardella resembles protagonists from Walker Percy novels in his existential search for meaning and purpose amidst upper class ennui. Much like Binx Bolling in The Moviegoer or Will Barrett in The Second Coming, Jep leads a life of privilege and pleasure, yet finds himself spiritually adrift, grappling with questions of authenticity. As Jep wanders through the excesses of Rome's high society, he is detached and drifting, attempting to find something real and meaningful to anchor himself to in the face of mortality and his own wasted potential. Like Percy's characters, Jep must embark on an odyssey to fill the existential void within him and uncover what makes life worth living beyond surface distractions. His search takes on philosophical and spiritual dimensions, provoking epiphanies about the fleeting nature of earthly joys and the necessity of deeper connection. Jep shares the alienation, introspection, and search for significance that define Percy's protagonists.
Sorrentino's vivid cinematography, dreamlike sequences, and masterful use of music come together to create a meditative portrait of one man's crisis of faith in confronting life's ephemeral nature. As Jep quests for the "great beauty" beneath Rome's dazzling excess, the film invites viewers to contemplate what gives life purpose and meaning beyond the superficial. With deft nuance and aesthetic flair, The Great Beauty offers a modern allegory on reconciling joy, anguish, beauty, and loss in "the wretched squalor and miserable humanity" of being in the world.