The Great Beauty

Plot

The film opens with a quote from Louis-Ferdinand Céline's novel Journey to the End of the Night: "Travel is useful; it exercises the imagination. All the rest is disappointment and fatigue. Our journey is entirely imaginary. That is its strength. It goes from life to death. People, animals, cities, things – all are imagined. It's a novel, just a fictitious narrative. Littré says so, and he's never wrong. And besides, in the first place, anyone can do as much. You just have to close your eyes. It's on the other side of life."

Jep Gambardella is a 65-year-old seasoned journalist and theater critic, mostly committed to wandering among the social events of a Rome immersed in the beauty of its history and in the superficiality of its inhabitants today, in a merciless contrast. He also ventured into creative writing in his youth: he is the author of only one work called The Human Apparatus. Despite the appreciation and the many awards he received, Jep has not written other books, not only for his laziness but above all for a creative block from which he cannot escape. The purpose of his existence has been to become a "socialite", but not just any socialite, but "the king of society".

Jep is surrounded by several friends: Romano, a playwright who is perpetually on the lead of a young woman who exploits him; Lello, a mouthy and wealthy toy seller; Viola, a wealthy bourgeois and mother of a son with serious mental problems named Andrea; Stefania, a self-centred radical chic writer; Dadina, the dwarf editor of the newspaper where Jep works.

One morning, he meets the husband of Elisa, a woman who has been Jep's first and probably only love: the man announces that Elisa has died, leaving behind only a diary in which the woman tells of her love for Jep; thus, her husband discovered that he had been a mere surrogate for 35 years, nothing more than "a good companion". Elisa's husband, now afflicted and grieved, will soon find consolation in the affectionate welcome of his foreign maid. After this episode, Jep begins a profound and melancholic reinterpretation of his life and a long meditation on himself and on the world around him. And, above all, he thinks about starting to write again.

During the following days, Jep meets Ramona, a stripper with painful secrets, and Cardinal Bellucci, in whom the passion for cooking is more alive than his Catholic faith; Jep is gradually convinced of the futility and uselessness of his existence. Soon his "vicious circle" also breaks down: Ramona, with whom he had established an innocent and profound relationship, dies of an incurable disease; Romano, disappointed by the deceptive attractiveness of Rome, leaves the city, farewelling only Jep; Stefania, humiliated by Jep, who had revealed her secrets and her lies to her face, left Jep's worldly circle; Viola, on the other hand, after the death of her son, donates all her possessions to the Church and becomes a missionary in Africa.

Just when hopes seem to abandon Jep once and for all, he is saved by a new episode: after a meeting, pushed by Dadina, who wants to get an interview with a "Saint", a Catholic missionary nun in the Third World, Jep goes to Giglio Island to report on the shipwreck of the Costa Concordia. Right here, remembering his first meeting with Elisa in a flashback, a glimmer of hope rekindles in him: his next novel is finally ready to come to light.

Cast

• Toni Servillo as Jep Gambardella
• Carlo Verdone as Romano
• Sabrina Ferilli as Ramona
• Carlo Buccirosso as Lello Cava
• Giovanna Vignola as Dadina
• Iaia Forte as Trumeau, Lello's wife
• Pamela Villoresi as Viola
• Galatea Ranzi as Stefania
• Franco Graziosi as Count Colonna
• Giorgio Pasotti as Stefano
• Massimo Popolizio as Alfio Bracco
• as Countess Colonna
• Luca Marinelli as Andrea, Viola's son
• Serena Grandi as Lorena
• Ivan Franek as Ron Sweet
• Giusi Merli as Sister Maria
• Anita Kravos as Talia Concept
• Roberto Herlitzka as Cardinal Bellucci
• Isabella Ferrari as Orietta
• Fanny Ardant as herself (uncredited)
• Antonello Venditti as himself (uncredited)

Music

Reception

Italian Criticism

Philippe Ridet, Rome correspondent for Le Monde, criticized the film in Internazionale while supporting the perspectives of journalists from La Stampa, Raffaella Silipo and Gianni Riotta:

But the six thousand voters in Hollywood are like this. They love Italy for how they imagine it, just like all the jury members who awarded the film across the world before its triumph in Los Angeles. 5 May 2014.}}

Ridet's perspective was countered in an article by Tiziano Peccia for the Brazilian academic journal O Olho da História. The article, dedicated to beauty, followed the death of Umberto Eco:

Yet, we must ask ourselves a question: Was this Sorrentino’s message? Did the Neapolitan director aim to emphasize the theme of Italian decadence, as denounced by the media? Or rather, more profoundly, was his focus on the modern and worldly frenzy that seduces, beguiles, entices, and then leaves one burdened with a handful of shattered, cursed dreams?

The fact that a film like La Grande Bellezza can be interpreted as a limited picture of Italian issues smells, to borrow expressions from journalist Marco Travaglio, of rhetoric and provincialism. It’s the provincialism of a people probably no longer accustomed to hearing about themselves in a positive or meritocratic light—a nation that turns into mockery a well-crafted work appreciated globally. This widespread provincialism is a new fruit for a country like Italy, accustomed to millennia of greatness and artistic production recognized and esteemed everywhere.

Why is it that a work about moral decay, such as Petronius’s Satyricon, describing animalistic instincts and dissoluteness, is interpreted as a reflection on a vicious, savage humanity, rather than a critical portrayal of the dissolute realities of Pozzuoli and Crotone?}} Tiziano Peccia, "Critica e critiche alla grande bellezza," O Olho da História, Issue 22 (April 2016)

It has been observed that while international film criticism has generally judged Sorrentino's film positively, Italian critics have been divided with harsh judgments:

Or, on the contrary, with great appreciation:

This contrast of opinions has been interpreted in various ways, but in negative evaluations, it seems to reconnect with the recurring notion of the director's presumed arrogance and ambition to propose his vision, almost as if it were a sequel to La dolce vita by Federico Fellini, which instead resonates with the imagination of international audiences who appreciate this portrayal.

Critical response

The film has a 91% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 135 reviews, with a weighted average rating of 8/10. The website's critical consensus states, "Dazzlingly ambitious, beautifully filmed, and thoroughly enthralling, The Great Beauty offers virtuoso filmmaking from writer/director Paolo Sorrentino." The film holds a score of 86/100 on Metacritic based on 34 reviews, signifying "universal acclaim".

Robbie Collin at The Daily Telegraph awarded Sorrentino's film the maximum five stars and described it as "a shimmering coup de cinema". He likened it to Roberto Rossellini's Rome, Open City and Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita in its ambition to record a period of Roman history on film. "Rossellini covered the Nazi occupation of 1944; Fellini the seductive, empty hedonism of the years that followed. Sorrentino's plan is to do the same for the Berlusconi era," he wrote. Deborah Young of The Hollywood Reporter stated "Sorrentino's vision of moral chaos and disorder, spiritual and emotional emptiness at this moment in time is even darker than Fellini's (though Ettore Scola's The Terrace certainly comes in somewhere)." Critics have also identified other purposefully explicit film homages: to Roma, 8½, Scola's Splendor, Michelangelo Antonioni's La notte. Spanish film director Pedro Almodóvar named the film as one of the twelve best films of 2013, placing it second in his list. In 2016, the film was ranked among the 100 greatest films since 2000 in an international critics poll by 177 critics around the world. It is currently director Paolo Sorrentino's second highest rated film on Rotten Tomatoes. In 2025, it was one of the films voted for the "Readers' Choice" edition of The New York Times list of "The 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century," finishing at number 220.

Film critics' top lists

Various critics named the film as one of the best of 2013.

• 1st: Time Out Londons 10 Best films of 2013
• 1st: Robbie Collin, The Daily Telegraph
• 2nd: Xan Brooks, The Guardian
• 2nd: Richard Corliss, Time
• 3rd: Chris Vognar, The Dallas Morning News
• 4th: Sight & Sound
• 4th: Lisa Schwarzbaum, BBC
• 6th: Jake Coyle, Associated Press
• 7th: Stephen Holden, The New York Times
• 8th: Simon Abrams & Alan Scherstuhl, The Village Voice
• 9th: Robert Gifford, The Diamondback
• 9th: Empires 50 Best Films of 2013
• Best films of 2013: Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
• Best Film of 2013: Justin Chang, Variety

Peter Bradshaw also named the film as one of the 20 best films of the 21st Century in the Guardian.

Awards and nominations

Awards Please do not add awards or ceremonies that currently do not have a Wiki article.

Notes

References

References

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