Rotten Tomatoes
Cancel Movies Tv shows RT App News Showtimes

The Great Beauty

Play trailer Poster for The Great Beauty 2013 2h 22m Comedy Drama Play Trailer Watchlist
Watchlist Tomatometer Popcornmeter
91% Tomatometer 135 Reviews 81% Popcornmeter 10,000+ Ratings
An aging writer bitterly recollects his passionate youth.
Watch on Fandango at Home Stream Now

Where to Watch

The Great Beauty

The Great Beauty

What to Know

Critics Consensus

Dazzlingly ambitious, beautifully filmed, and thoroughly enthralling, The Great Beauty offers virtuoso filmmaking from writer/director Paolo Sorrentino.

Read Critics Reviews

Critics Reviews

View More
Larushka Ivan-Zadeh metro.co.uk 09/05/2017
5/5
Sorrentino's heady, vivid yet wearily melancholic musing on midlife crisis submerges you in sumptuousness until you emerge, blinking, as if from some impossibly glamorous party. Go to Full Review
Marjorie Baumgarten Austin Chronicle 02/13/2014
3.5/5
Wild set-pieces and rueful observations are the stock in trade of this Italian film by one of the modern masters of cinema, Paolo Sorrentino. Go to Full Review
Jonathan Romney Film Comment Magazine 02/06/2014
I can't remember when a film last gave me such a surge of pure pleasure -- no, outright euphoria -- as The Great Beauty. Go to Full Review
Sergi Sánchez Fotogramas 07/18/2022
5/5
It would be a disservice to consider this generous film a mere homage. [Full review in Spanish] Go to Full Review
Dustin Chang Floating World 02/22/2021
If the film is a reflection of the Bellusconi bunga-bunga era and its hollowness, that's fine too. It still retains that melancholy and sadness and silence and thoughtfulness against that super stylized, slick, camera moves and gyrating, young bodies. Go to Full Review
Jordan M. Smith IONCINEMA.com 11/04/2020
The Great Beauty is a cinematic marvel that playfully asks what we find truly joyous in life and questions their validity with a sardonic over exuberance. Go to Full Review
Read all reviews

Audience Reviews

View More
5d An absolutely timeless gem. See more Thomas S Sep 14 I think the real strength of this movie, beyond its obvious visual beauty, lies in how differently it can resonate depending on who’s watching. For me, it’s a meditation on what fades and what endures, and on where we should place our focus in life. Jep has written only one book, then spent decades drifting through a life of parties and appearances. Now, facing the nearness of death, he sees everything crumbling: his friends are leaving, dying, vanishing. What remains is his work — that one book — just as the ruins of ancient Rome remain the city’s most beautiful landmarks, precisely because they have withstood time. It’s in that realization that Jep understands he must write again and come back to his roots, "because roots are important", as sorella Maria points out. And that, ultimately, no fleeting experience can surpass the purity of that first kiss on the island. "This is how it always ends. With death. But first there was life. Hidden beneath the blah, blah, blah. It's all settled beneath the chitter chatter and the noise. Silence and sentiment. Emotion and fear. The haggard, inconstant flashes of beauty. And then the wretched squalor and miserable humanity. All buried under the cover of the embarrassment of being in the world, blah, blah, blah... 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." See more Hao Ian L Sep 6 There are even traces of Tarkovsky’s Mirror to be found here, and similarly, The Great Beauty isn’t about plot so much as mood, memory, and the little joys in life, it’s an elegy that plays out deliberately, which is the exact tone effect Sorrentino is trying to set for the picture here. See more Deb R. @MaybeAmovie Aug 2 Dazzlingly beautiful work of art. See more Carl G Mar 17 After thinking about the film non-stop for the past 3 days, I decided to watch Paolo Sorrentino's "La Grande Bellezza" and what a trip that was! I don't remember much of the film but I remember that it was unlike anything I saw. I remember that Sorrentino took me on a trip for 2 hours and 20 minutes and then threw me back to reality. He took me with him in his dreams, his desires, his fears. He showed me what he loves, what he hates. He told me what life was without even explaining to me. He told me what to pursue and what not to with pursuing everything. It has no sense right? But that's what the film is about. It has no sense of all, no storyline, no direct messages but strangely I understood everything without even thinking, without trying to understand. Like a feeling, like an emotion it entered and never left. I understood the film by feeling it not by watching it or thinking about it. Like Jep, I longed for the best moments of my life that are now gone. I longed for the feeling of drowning into life without taking a single breath. I felt like I was underwater, suffocating, wanting to take a breath, wanting to live, to go back in time. To live those moments again. To spring back up into those lost moments. Those moments that have been stolen by time, the enemy of man. Time that steals everything from us, even the bad moments. It leaves nothing behind it. Like monster, it takes everything with it. Sorrentino wanted us to feel the film. He didn't want to explain anything. Even the characters' deaths are left unknown. The main themes of that film are Nostalgia, Age, Youth, Love, Society, Life itself. Sorrentino shows us how society wants to stay young even the people in it are getting old. He shows us the banality of society. He wants to show us that sometimes in life we lose ourselves pursuing something, following certain people, a certain society but when we look back to those moments, we know that we lost our time pursuing and following the wrong things in life. But how could we get those moments back? Well, we can't... One of the scenes that marked me the most is the scene at the beach. Where Old Jep gets underwater, and the Young Jep resurfaces. It gave me a certain feeling that I can't explain with words, but a great and melancholic feeling that assured me that what has been lost or what has passed is forever gone. When we remember those moments, either we're proud about them, or we regret them deeply. But when we regret those moments, we regret youth that has been long gone and will never come back. I will finish my review by this simple quote of the film... "This is how it always ends. With death. But first there was life. Hidden beneath the blah, blah, blah. It's all settled beneath the chitter chatter and the noise. Silence and sentiment. Emotion and fear. The haggard, inconstant flashes of beauty. And then the wretched squalor and miserable humanity. All buried under the cover of the embarrassment of being in the world, blah, blah, blah... 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." See more Jacob B Mar 4 It’s as if the visual esthetics of Fellini combined with the intellectual sensibilities of Bergman. A magnificent film with gentle humor, astounding depth and yes, great beauty. See more Read all reviews
The Great Beauty

My Rating

Read More Read Less POST RATING WRITE A REVIEW EDIT REVIEW

Movie Info

Synopsis An aging writer bitterly recollects his passionate youth.
Director
Paolo Sorrentino
Producer
Nicola Giuliano, Francesca Cima
Screenwriter
Paolo Sorrentino, Umberto Contarello
Production Co
France 2 Cinéma, Pathé Productions Inc., Medusa Film, Indigo Films, Babe Films
Genre
Comedy, Drama
Original Language
Italian
Release Date (Streaming)
May 21, 2015
Box Office (Gross USA)
$2.8M
Runtime
2h 22m
Aspect Ratio
Scope (2.35:1)
Most Popular at Home Now