REVIEW - THE GREAT BEAUTY

Paolo Sorrentino is a liar. To rephrase, Paolo Sorrentino is a filmmaker. Lol deep, huh? The Great Beauty is patently about Rome, but what Rome? I visited Rome once, at Easter. It drizzled constantly. Even the Coliseum wasn't up to much in that weather. But this is his Rome, Sorrentino's Rome, a Rome which does and does not exist. A party, the sort which only gauche Western Europeans can have, full of middle-aged cultured types dancing to dated middle-class Europop - an artist's vision of the nightclub scene, vapid and untrue. This is his Rome, or it is a part of his Rome, and in this, he's lying, right? Well, he's filmmaking. And through the rest of the film he continues to lie, about the kind of experiences one could never reasonably expect to have in this city, unforgettable, transcendent experiences in only the most beautiful places with only the most beautiful people. But the Italians are known for more than just their fashion and their food - they are known for their cinema. And these are experiences which cinema allows us to have. Thus The Great Beauty triumphs as a work of extreme and sublime escapism. Sorrentino is diligent as director, as if obsessing over the most trivial details, choosing the exact framing of every shot for the highest artistic value. A shallow film is begat, but not entirely, as Sorrentino isn't bad at provoking emotion, even in his unfailingly arch methods. And naughty human comedy, taking potshots at the most and the least privileged indiscriminately, wards off pomposity and keeps the film buoyant; one of the film's standout comic set-pieces is set at the funeral of a suicide victim. Glittering cinematography aims for a travelogue aesthetic, quite intentionally, and achieves it, quite successfully. Because The Great Beauty is interested in becoming a work of art in its own right only secondarily. Its first concern is in capturing the great beauty that is, and the numerous great beauties within, Rome. And in such concerns, it tells no lies.