Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film, The Great Beauty (La Grande Bellezza from Italy) is, well, different. As my movie companion and I left the theater, we shared our perplexity over what, exactly, the movie was about. I’ve sat with it for several days now, but still, I’ve not much more than questions and strings of what feel to be rambling thoughts.
What is art? What is beautiful? Does it matter if someone is harmed in getting to that beauty? Does it matter if it is for the greater good, and who defines what’s “greater” in that? Where is the line between performance art and something more, something darker? What is excessive, and why does excessive matter if no one is directly injured? Why do we need these titles of judgment of what we consider a sufficient level of something versus what might be too much? And even if something is art or beautiful, whether in performance, in vision, in literature, in sound, or in some other medium, what is allowed to be sacrificed in achieving that? And that brings me back to wondering what is art and what is beautiful.
The film is visually stunning. It is visually vibrant, alive, and big. The story, though, feels jerky–much like a conversation with someone who has had two too many triple espressos. Jep, the protagonist in The Great Beauty, seems to be drifting. But the life through which he drifts feels empty in spite of his being so often surrounded by so many. The nightlife that seems to be his purpose is lavish and lewd. It’s reflective, though, of where he’s found himself at this “take stock” moment of life—a 65th birthday. And watching the movie feels almost like being inside his head, as he mulls over his life and nurses a dreadful hangover.
Oscar-worthy? I cannot say it was the clear winner to me. But I’m not in the Academy. I preferred the other two Foreign Language Films I saw for their stories. The Great Beauty, on the other hand, is just too different from those two in genre for it to be in the same category merely because it was filmed in a foreign language. But that’s the Oscar game. Thus, I wonder, sometimes, why the Academy chooses the movie it does. The plots of Broken Circle Breakdown and Omar are much better. (The plots must be: they exist. (There is very little meaty story arc in The Great Beauty, and what is there is buried under a layer of excess.)) They are, though, traditional films with suspense, enriched dialogue, and lots of human emotions beautifully displayed, raw, and feeling real.
The Great Beauty is, as I said, different. One might call The Great Beauty an “artsy” film; after all, it is quite the visual overload of grand images. And admittedly, the movie makes me add Italy to my list. I want to spend time in Rome. I want to feel the joy of life that those in the film do. I want to savor.
So maybe that’s it: The Great Beauty brings out in me not a desire for a life like Jep’s, but it does make me want to make sure I savor what’s beautiful in my own. It makes me want to stop and see where that beauty is, inherently. It makes me want to turn up the volume on what I *see* in life and in others. And I suppose that message, delivered in this manner, is worthy a golden statue.