The Great Beauty

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Thomas S 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." Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 09/14/25 Full Review Hao Ian L 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. Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 09/09/25 Full Review Deb R. Dazzlingly beautiful work of art. Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 08/02/25 Full Review Carl G 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." Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 03/17/25 Full Review Jacob B 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. Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 03/04/25 Full Review Arcangelo V La grande bellezza ovvero il grande inganno. Non riesco a capire come può aver ingannato critici e recensori un tale enorme guazzabuglio di immagini, finte trovate o semplici sketch di volgarità mal recitate. Negli USA, nella patria del Cinema di Professione dove ognuno ha un suo ruolo e viene valutato e pagato per quello che sa dare e spesso sa dare tanto. Tanto da commuovere, tanto da far piangere e ridere e immedesimarti e rimanere attaccato alla poltrona. Come può una giuria di questo grande paese, aver premiato una tale Boiata. Rated 0.5/5 Stars •  Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars 02/09/25 Full Review Read all reviews

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