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ramonsouzagarcia-blog · 8 years ago

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La Grande Belleza

La Grande Belleza (An Interpretation)

I first saw La Grande Belleza in the wee hours of the morning. It ended just as a hazy dawn began to illuminate the sky outside my bedroom window. I lay in a numb silence, the closing lines of the film echoing in my head. I felt...strange. The feeling was surreal....

This is how it always ends…in death.

But first, there was a life hidden beneath all the bla bla bla….

Everything is covered beneath the frivolity and the noise,

the silence and the sorrow,

the emotion and the fear…

the gaunt, inconstant flashes of beauty,

the decay,

the misfortune,

and wretched humanity...

all buried under the blanket of the embarrassment of being in the world bla bla bla…

It had been a long time since a film had moved me in this way. I pulled the curtains closed to keep the room dark. I didn’t want the sun up just yet. The film was pregnant with a metaphysics waiting to be solved and translated.

There are stories that are simple, where the plot is the whole story. Then there are stories that run deep, and play on multiple themes and manifold layers of truth. Films like these are not so neatly comprehended in a “once and for all, I know what it’s trying to say” sort of way. Here was a film that compelled repeated viewing.

La Grande Belleza is an experience of enormous proportions—not only in terms of thematic breadth but, more importantly, in terms of a profound depth. The film is a whirlpool that catches you on the surface and then drags you violently down to a subterranean netherworld…

“Everything is covered beneath the frivolity and the noise….”

A perceptive viewer, seeing the film for the first time, will be cued, early in the film, to switch on multiple lenses, to pay attention, to open one’s mind and one’s…intuition, to open wide because more than just a plot is playing out.

If there is anything to be said that is emblematic of director Paolo Sorrentino, it is his visual style. Camera movement will be the first thing a Sorrentino neophyte will notice. The camera opens and pans through scenes with artful elegance. The composition of each shot is painstakingly art-directed and planned. The frames that unfold are cinematic art-scapes of wide vistas and frescoes... and intense, intimate portraits.

But that is just the first, most discernible, aspect of the film. Sorrentino is a master of sound design. He is able to convey mood and message through a careful selection of musical scores from various artists. In La Grande Belleza, he uses music to mark and bucket different themes together, such that it becomes possible to divine the director’s intent, even as these scenes are spread out through the film.

And then, there is the writing. It is excellent. I am unfortunately not able to speak Italian, and it is likely that the original version is much more beautifully written. The Spanish translation, however, is superior to the English version. There is a poetic rhythm that is not captured in English. But I digress….

The surface story is about a man, Jep Gambardella, who has just turned 65. From a quiet, less than cosmopolitan background, he is now a prince of the social scene. He knows all the important people, and they know him…. Indeed even the Cardinal, and most likely successor to the Chair of St. Peter, is honored to be a dinner guest at Jep’s home.

“When I came to Rome, at the age of 26,” he says, “I fell quite swiftly, without even realizing it, into what might be defined as the whirlpool of the high life. But I didn’t just want to live on the fast lane; I wanted to be the King of the high life. And of course, I succeeded. I didn’t just want to attend all the parties, I wanted to have the power to make them fail!”

"Cuando llegé a Roma a los veinte-seis años, me precipité demasiado rápido, apenas sin darme cuenta, a aquello que se puede definir como el remolino de la mundanidad. Pero yo no quería ser simplemente un hombre mundano. Quería ser el rey de la mundanidad. Y desde luego, lo conseguí. No sólo quería participar en todas las fiestas, quería tener el poder de hacerlas fracasar!”

Indeed, Jep is presented to the audience, for the first time, at the party of parties! It is after all the king’s birthday, Jep’s 65th. All of the beautiful people are in attendance. And Jep appears quite at ease in his court, waving to well-wishers and dancing the Colita. But it is also here, at the pinnacle of this epic party, that Jep steps out of the cola, and, in one sweeping, surreal moment, he stands before us… unmasked.

“To this question, as kids, my friends always gave the same answer: ‘Pussy’. Whereas I answered "The smell of old people's houses". The question was "What do you really like the most in life?" I was destined for sensibility. I was destined to become a writer. I was destined to become Jep Gambardella.”

“De pequeños, a esta pregunta mis amigos daban siempre la misma respuesta… ‘El coño’. Pero yo respondía: “El olor de las casas de viejos”. La pregunta era: ¿Qué es lo que realmente te gusta más en la vida? Estaba destinado a la sensibilidad. Estaba destinado a convertirme en escritor. Estaba destinado a convertirme en Jep Gambardella.”

So soon in the film, it appears as if the cat is out of the bag… the inner tension of the story lying exposed. Is this a mere story about a man who’s sold himself out? A man destined for deep sensibility, a magnificent writer whose first book was a national treasure, suddenly reduced to a pop art critic…a king of noise and mindless chatter… the king of the pointless bla bla bla of the mediocre…

And yet, almost as one begins to lose interest, one begins to detect a thematic undercurrent running in parallel. There is a scene that cuts into the film, disjointed and with no relation to its trajectory. Almost as if in a dream, a mother is looking for her child. “Have you seen my daughter”, she asks Jep. We see this from Jep’s point of view. The mother steps away from the camera and reveals a crypt behind her. The music cues surrealism. The camera moves slowly towards the crypt, enters it, and switches to the third person perspective.

We see Jep inside… and we hear a child’s voice, “Who are you”, the child asks Jep… the voice emanating from a pit in the center of the crypt. The child is apparently standing underneath, looking up from the dakness at Jep. “Who am I,” Jep replies…. “I am…” he stammers. The child’s voice interrupts him and says, “No! You are no one.”

The film begins to feel, from this point onwards, like a labyrinth of images. Sorrentino opens a door for us, and we are invited to start seeing from a very different perspective. We begin stitching and connecting images and scenes. We are now creating meaning. The film is a looking glass, and one will bring to it, and derive from it, one’s own interpretation and insight....

On the days following his 65th birthday, Jep begins to experience a sense of estrangement, a feeling of being disjointed, and somehow suddenly disconnected from his milieu--from his socialite friends, from his work, from the frenzy of his parties. Some hidden turmoil comes bubbling up from deep within his spirit.

As he walks home from his big birthday party celebration, we see, for the first time, an image of nuns- one young novice, in particular, is staring at Jep. A carved stone head of a fountain inter-cuts the scene momentarily, its eyes penetrating, as water from some underground aqueduct gushes out of its mouth.

The images of nuns are replete throughout the film, and I believe that this image is a vital clue to understanding the film....

Jep is lying in a hammock on his porch across the coliseum, a glass of scotch in hand, when he hears children laughing and giggling in the distance. He stands and gazes down at the courtyard of a nearby convent, where he sees nuns playing with the little children. Jep is visibly moved. This is the first time Robert Burns’ song plays... (and it will play again, marking scenes that seek to convey Jep’s uprooted nature-- his enigmatic longing for some distant time, for some special place buried within his soul.)

My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here,

My heart's in the Highlands, a-chasing the deer....

When Jep hears the news of the death of his first love, broken to him by the shallow simpleton who married her, we glimpse nuns walking in the rain, as they pass both men by in their moment of mutual consolation. This entire sequence of morbid discovery and desolation is abruptly interrupted by a nun laughing like an idiot, as though some darkly intended ridicule is hurled up at Jep through some crack in the veil of Maya (in the Vedic sense). For a moment, Jep’s self-composed world of illusion is shattered by the stark, sharp indifference of nature.

Indeed, as the film approaches its resolution, Jep has a poignant encounter with a saintly nun, who only eats roots. In a bizarre moment, amidst a flock of flamingos who have come to settle on Jep's porch, the nun tells him her secret: “Do you know why I only eat roots?” she asks Jep, “Because roots are important,” she tells him. The nuns are poignantly revealed in this unearthly scene as the absurd symbol (in the Camusian sense) of what lies “underneath”. They are the mantle, safeguarding some sacred knowledge.

Two passages open and close the film. The first is a quote from a novel by Louis Ferdinand Céline, Journey to the End of the Night. The concluding passage is Jep’s epiphany. The movie must be seen in the context of this prologue and epilogue.

Louis Ferdinand Céline:

Travel is very useful.

It exercises the imagination.

All the rest is disappointment and fatigue.

The journey is entirely imaginary.

Therein lies its strength.

It goes from life to death.

People, animals, cities, things-- it's all invention.

It's a novel, nothing more than simple fiction.

Littrè says so, and he's never wrong.

And besides, anyone can do the same.

You just have to close your eyes,

and you're on the other side of the world.

In the end, our daily lives of parties and noise, work and labor, architecture, literature, and even art are illusory. Reality, death, and the nature of things and the world are indifferent to us. The big questions have no answers, and everything is ultimately irrelevant.

At the end of the film, Jep makes his final statement…

In the end, it's just a trick. Yes. It's just a trick.

Before Jep makes his conclusion, that it’s all a trick, he says, “In other places, there are other things. But I don't care about those other places. Therefore... let the novel begin!”

Only one’s own choices, of how one chooses to view the world, are what give meaning to life. There are no absolute truths, just as there are no answers beyond what we see. Jep has found the ability, motivation, and desire to write his second novel, after years of procrastination and excuses.

“Why didn’t you write another novel,” the saintly nun asks Jep. “Because I was searching for the great beauty. But I never found it,” he replies. In the end, art saves Jep. One must create one’s own trick to give meaning to life. And thus, Jep finds the will to begin to write in earnest again. Jep couldn’t find the great beauty because it isn’t something you find. It’s something you have to create for yourself.

Before the final act of the film, Jep visits a photo exhibit of a man who has covered an entire stadium with mug shots of himself, taken every day since he was a child. While this scene initially sets itself up as yet another of those kitsch art shows that Jep attends in his mundane job as an art critic, the music that plays is, instead, the musical cue for moments of profound self discovery for Jep.

Art is presented as a transformative force. It redeems us from the abyss of the indifference and coldness of nature, from the senseless noise and frivolity, from all the bla bla bla…

Each one makes of himself, and of his life, a work of art. This is the great beauty. Self-creation is the redeeming principle of human life.

“In the end, its just a trick. Yes, it’s just a trick.”

Jep finally sees the human experience, and its reality, for what it is. There is no redemption in anything that is outside one’s self. Human life is merely, and inescapably, a point of view. Human perception is a trick of mirrors. It is illusory, imaginary. But because it is, one has a choice... one is able to defy nature by becoming the maker of one’s own values. One has godlike power to create the great beauty. This is the sacred knowledge the nuns are hiding. This is the secret behind the disappearing giraffe trick. Céline says so too, anyone can do it, he says, you just have to close your eyes, and you're on the other side of the world.

Epílogo:

Siempre se termina así: con la muerte.

Pero primero ha habido una vida escondida bajo el bla bla bla…

Todo está resguardado bajo la frivolidad y el ruido,

el silencio y el sentimiento,

la emoción y el miedo…

los demacrados inconstantes destellos de belleza,

la decadencia,

la desgracia

y el hombre miserable.

Todo sepultado bajo la cubierta de la vergüenza de estar en el mundo bla bla bla.

En otros lugares hay otras cosas.

A mi no me importan los otros lugares.

Así pues, que empiece la novela.

En el fondo, es sólo un truco.

Sí. Sólo es un truco.

#la grande bellezza #la gran belleza #the great beauty #paolo sorrentino #the young pope #cannes #film #movies #movie review

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