The Great Beauty (La Grande Belezza) (2013)

Review:

"This is my life, and it's nothing".

In what is perhaps one of the greatest film beginnings ever, filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino juxtaposes the distinct moods that his ironically titled, "The Great Beauty" promises to immerse the audience into. It is a golden, sun shiny day, and the camera glides around a historical site in the great city of Rome while a group of choir ladies croon an ethereal composition, exalting us into an almost divine stupor. A group of tourists are visiting the site. One of the tourists goes on to photograph the beautiful surroundings, and in the process, collapses and passes out, leaving us wondering if it was the sun that did it, or an overwhelming sense of fulfillment upon witnessing the miraculous sites around him.

Cut to a polar opposite mood, and right into the glitz and glamour of a dazzling, luxurious roof top party, complete with throbbing music, expensive liquor, gorgeous women and an eclectic bunch of party animals dancing away into the night. If the first scene puts you in a spiritual mood, the scene right after leaves you in high spirits, literally, as the camera gradually films the revelers upside down, and you are practically floating with the lot.

This is the lofty world of Jep Gambardella, an aging journalist and one-time novelist. Jep has always been the king of the high life. A party animal since his youth, Jep has been among the who's who and all the glitterati. But now at 65, he suddenly feels awakened to the emptiness and futility of his hedonistic lifestyle. He has always been aware, but now seems to be vocal about how he feels about all the plastic posers and wannabes around him. 

The kind of bunch he hangs out with has also made him somewhat of a misanthrope. He hasn't written a second novel in 40 years, for he lacked the inspiration and had been seeking the great beauty which he could never find. In a double whammy of sorts, Jep receives news that an old lover of his, Elisa had died and that it was found from her secret diary that she'd always loved him, 'til the end.

Jep finds himself at a strange crossroads in his vain existence, in the wake of these unexpected circumstances and changed thought processes. Thus begins his journey of self reflection, with pleasurable nostalgia acting as a welcome distraction from the depths of disillusionment. He ventures out into the streets of Rome, catches up with old friends, makes new ones and in the process, ends up discovering some of his own hidden emotional traits and a fresh approach to the meaning of life.

Sorrentino's film is a magnificent, colourful feast for the eyes and the ears, brimming with ideas and events that are entertaining as well as thought-provoking. The music, the cinematography and the strong, imaginative writing and its realization on screen are strong pillars of the film, all of which contribute to making it a sublime masterpiece. 

Amid all the grandiosity and pizazz, are embedded deeper subjects like nostalgia as a necessary diversion, gerascophobia (the fear of aging), mortality, loneliness, existential crisis, and escapism as a gateway to artistic inspiration. Toni Servillo successfully embodies the soul of Jep Gambardella in a sterling acting performance. Laced with wry humour and melancholy, "The Great Beauty" is a bittersweet, poetic tale, of a man's labyrinthine contemplation on life, intercut with memories, dreams and fantasies in a Fellini-esque canvas.

Score: 10/10

Analysis: 

Jep, being a writer, always acknowledges that writers imagine things, they add fantastical elements to reality. "When you write, you give life to fantasies, imagination, lies." Similarly Jep's journey is filled with fantasies and oneiric elements often melded entirely with the real world making them an integral and homogenous part of his experiences. It is not made explicit as to what is real and what is imagined, but based on the sheer absurdity of a situation or the presence of an exaggerated scenario in an episode makes this distinction visible.

In one such sequence that surely feels imagined, a little girl is lost somewhere in one of the monuments of Rome, and her mother is looking for her. Jep soon comes across her in her hiding place. She looks up and asks him who he is. As Jep starts to speak, she interrupts and says "No. You're nobody". Jep attempts to respond but finds himself at a loss of words. He suddenly finds his bubble burst, by a little girl, no less. This could be a manifestation of his own existential crisis; a realization of how his life has been vacuous with no real meaning.

Upon hearing the news of Elisa's death, Jep's mind drifts further and goes back in the beautiful past on a rocky beach where he first met Elisa. This wouldn't be the first time Jep would recall this. It is clear he has always reminisced about his first love. In a sleepy state, he mostly imagines that he sees the same sea where he met Elisa on his ceiling, as he lies down looking up. Along with such pleasant memories there are also manifestations of a guilty conscience. Moments after he learns of Elisa's death, there's rain and thunder outside, where a nun cackles with a devilish laughter, in a mocking way. Just as Jep appears at the scene, he sees two other nuns glancing at him with scorn.

Jep feels a sense of nostalgia, a lost innocence, purity and honesty when he sees kids playing with the nuns in the garden. He longs for that emotional fulfillment in simple joys of life. Later in the film when his editor Dadina (Giovanna Vignola) calls him 'Little Jep', it takes him by surprise but he is certainly moved by the gesture. He misses the tender love which had been obscured by all the fake affected relationships around him.

Years of being in the company of the people he doesn't find any real connection with, but for his buddy Romano (Carlo Verdone) and his dwarf editor Dadina, Jep has lost faith in real, selfless bonds. This has turned Jep into a cynic who cannot really make real friends anymore. This could be one of the reasons he goes back to meet old friends of his after several years. One of them has a 40 year old daughter, Ramona (Sabrina Ferilli) who aspires to be a stripper in her father's  nightclub.

Her father requests Jep to talk her out of it and perhaps, encourage her to find a husband and settle down. When Jep tries to do it and explains that family is a beautiful thing, he gets an answer from Ramona that echoes his own. "I am not cut out for beautiful things". Jep finally meets a person who matches his wavelength. Ramona and Jep connect well but their time together is short-lived.

"Everything around me is dying". Somewhere along Jep's journey, circumstances also force him to confront his own mortality. A psychologically troubled Andrea (Luca Marinelli), the son of Viola (Pamela Villoresi), one of Jep's friends, takes his own life after being haunted by the writings of Proust, who says death is around the corner. In an absurd sequence, Jep delivers a long monologue about the etiquette of a funeral, saying it's actually like a stage event. Ramona tries on several dresses for the funeral, during which Jep explains that one should never weep in a funeral for this steals the show from the family of the deceased.

But in a dramatic deviation, Jep begins to weep uncontrollably at the funeral, especially when no one comes forward to pick up the coffin when Andrea's friends are called upon and Jep and his gang volunteer to do the deed. While Jep is already aware of the inevitability of death, perhaps it dawns upon him, that even he may die lonely and friendless with no one around to take his coffin out. 

Part of his sorrow possibly stems from a guilt of not having done enough to help Andrea, despite Viola's requests. This is one poignant moment that brings out Jep's concealed fragility and serves as a sharp contrast to an earlier scene in which he accuses a socialite, Stefania (Galatea Ranzi) of judging and criticizing others to cover her own fragility and inadequacy. In another seemingly random scene that connects well to this emotional state of Jep, an old woman grabs Jep's hand in a cafe and asks "Who will look after you now?"

Some very subtle instances and other more prominent ones dwell upon mortality in connection with aspects like an inherent humanistic trait of clinging on to the past and lamenting the loss of past glory. While ultimately this facet gives Jep the inspiration he needs, we see some other fleeting characters like old aristocratic personalities, royal princesses, has-beens reduced to playing cards in darkly lit room while their beautiful heritage sites are locked away and preserved with the keys handed over to a trustworthy young person. The monuments serve as a reminder of their glorious past, a bygone era.

Ditto for a forgotten pair of a Count and a Countess who are now reduced to being hired for elite lunches and dinners, yet refuse to assume the identities of another family because they were at war for centuries! Later when they come home, they listen to recordings, presumably from museums that remind them of their roots and move them to tears. A now older, but famous French actress Fanny Ardant makes a blink and miss appearance as she strolls the streets through the night and bumps into Jep who almost doesn't recognize her, but eventually does. They smile at each other and she walks away.

Aging, mortality, and a desperation to hold on to a youth fast fading is one of the major themes explored in "The Great Beauty". And therefore we see an outlandish sequence of a cosmetologist in a freaky looking clinic giving some plastic old people botox injections in return for hefty sums of money. A one of a kind exhibition displays photographs of a man showcasing his day-wise aging, for he has continued his dad's legacy of taking one photograph per day throughout his life.

These experiences coupled with Jep's own drifting away into his days of yore, particularly that amorous experience on an island, further convinces him that nostalgia is indeed a great thing that connects you with your roots; makes you feel young, happy and human! Romano spells out this aspect in one of his theatrical plays: "What's wrong with feeling nostalgic? It's the only distraction left for those who've no faith in the future!"

A 104 year, decrepit old nun, Sister Maria, also known as the Saint (Giusi Merli in an excellent performance; the actress is actually 50!) visits Rome and Jep finds an opportunity to interact with an eccentric cardinal, in relation to his struggle with faith and spirituality. His hopes of finding answers are thwarted when the cardinal is more interested in enjoying the feast instead, and showing off his own culinary skills. In a very funny sequence, when Jep is blunt about his views on the church, the cardinal who is also known to be a great exorcist, exorcises Jep before he drives away!

"Do you know why I eat only roots? Because roots are important". It is only in these words of Sister Maria that Jep finally seems to find an answer and a direction. In a moment of epiphany, Flamingos gathered around on Jep's terrace to rest while migrating, fly away when Sister Maria blows in the air. Jep realizes, the time has come to migrate to the next state of his being with a new realization. But in the final pivotal scene, whether this realization sways towards his cynical side or towards an optimism, is debatable. Here is where the interpretations fork without any definite conclusion.

Jep does acknowledge that everything ends with death. But first there was life; a life of emotion and fear, silence and sentiment. Only it is hidden beneath layers added over the years of all the 'blah blah blah'....probably in a self-deprecating reference to his own grandiose life. This scene is interspersed with flashes of memory with his first love on an island and a parallel scene of Sister Maria's monumental achievement of climbing St. John's Basilica's Scala Sancta on her knees, in a very freaky sequence. These flashes of memory are what he perhaps refers to as 'haggard, inconstant flashes of beauty' that are hidden beneath the 'embarrassment of being in this world', his present.

And after all, 'it's just a trick'! In a cynical worldview, it would seem that he embraces his empty existence in a positive light as a glamorous distraction from human misery. Jep's friend Arturo makes a giraffe disappear with his trick. A little girl throws paints on a canvas and rubs them around and creates a modern art masterpiece. A woman head butts on a stone wall, but turns out she uses protective foam. Artists deal with the art of deception. The trick is to play with reality and use imagination. Writers do it too, as Jep admits earlier in the film. Distortion is the key. The past is gone, it is beyond and provides only 'inconstant flashes of beauty', and he doesn't deal with what's beyond.

And therefore with a sense of complacency, Jep's novel begins. The 'blah blah' that he grows weary and conscious of, suddenly seems to have a positivity to it. Paralleled with Sister Maria's feat, is Jep's achievement of changing his lens of looking at things. The film is book-ended by these two similar ideas, the beginning having a quote from Louis-Ferdinand Céline's "Journey to the end of the night": "Our journey is entirely imaginary. That is its strength. It goes from life to death. People, animals, cities, things, all are imagined. It's a novel, just a fictitious narrative." Jep's extravagant existence was his deception, his escapism.

But on the other hand, could the trick he is referring to, be just the opposite? To overlook the 'blah, blah', and behold what lies beneath the surface? It is true that Jep remarks "I don't deal with what lies beyond". But could it be possible that while he presently does not deal with what lies beyond, a changed, reformed Jep really wishes to put in an effort (think Sister Maria's effort and achievement again) to dig beneath and unearth the emotion, the sentiment, and make those inconstant flashes more whole?

There's a third, meta way to look at it. Maybe Paolo Sorrentino is playing with the audience here. If the obvious conclusion doesn't suit some positive thinking audiences, perhaps they could deceive themselves and choose the other optimistic interpretation of the ending! Whatever the case, we can only hope that Jep Gambardella, who we have come to like so much by the end of the film despite the cynical old man that he is, finds his peace.

Calvary (2014)

"Do not despair; one of the thieves was saved. 
Do not presume; one of the thieves was damned".
 
- St. Augustine.

In a startling opening scene, and as Father James (Brendan Gleeson) himself admits, "It's certainly a startling opening line", an unknown man, during a confessional in a local church in a small Irish village, confesses that he was raped by a priest as a child, repeatedly for five years. The man says, he isn't seeking absolution, nor does he want to cope with what happened to him. He instead wants to kill a good priest, for that would be a big thing for the church as against killing a bad priest, and besides, his perpetrator is no more among the living. The man walks away issuing the threat, but not before granting Father James seven days to settle things and make his peace with God. The day is marked as the next Sunday.

Over the following week, a somewhat perturbed Father James goes about his life, and interacts with the village-folk, perhaps in the hope of confirming his suspicions about the identity of his would-be killer. Only this week turns out to be like no other, as he struggles with his own faith, caught in the eye of a storm of agnosticism and religious criticism.

Calvary is the name of the site where Jesus Christ was crucified. James is also, perhaps in danger of being killed by the seaside, where the killer says he would do the act. While James is no saint, the fatherly priest is certainly a godsend in the godforsaken Irish village, where cynicism, agnosticism and extreme atheism prevails. God-fearing, optimistic, morally stable people like Father James who still believe in humanity are in a clear minority. While the setup evokes memories of Robert Bresson's revered classic "Diary of a Country Priest" (1951), McDonagh's film differs in its tone and intent. In Bresson's film, the lead character is a young priest, just starting off in a local village, where all the inherent meanness and moral corruption around him finds him questioning his own faith in the face of a hopeless scenario. Moreover, the film is relentlessly bleak, practically devoid of any kind of humour.

"Calvary" is more of a dark tragicomedy rife with sardonic and often gallows humour, with a mystery plot wrapped around, giving it a more edgy and accessible feel. Its thematic heaviness, touching upon complex subjects such as existentialism, faith, religion and morality may find considerable appeal in the arthouse circles. The lead character in "Calvary" is an elderly man, more experienced, and undeterred by all the scorn that comes his way. Carefree individuals with little or no scruples seem to hate him as well as admire him. They do attend the church regularly, but it's obvious not all of them are real believers or abide by even a shred of the doctrines of the religion they follow.

A married woman who visits the church appears to have facial injuries. James interferes and finds she is having an affair with a coloured South American man and infers that the injury is caused due to a violent reaction by the husband. But the altruistic move of putting these people on a righteous path misfires when it turns out, the woman enjoys being beaten, and her husband is happy about the situation for he doesn't much like her anyway! Just when one thinks it couldn't get any more degenerate, the woman herself comes up to James, mocks him, tells him she is about to commit a mortal sin, and goes on to meet her lover!

Interesting questions are raised about morality and sin, salvation and damnation, through Father James' one week journey. A well-written script lays out intriguing episodes in the life of James, woven together, giving us a prophetic picture of the kind of culture that is threatening to emerge in the village, serving as a microcosm for the world in general. The idea of faith appears to be fading away. People seem to getting increasingly detached and the moral fabric holding the society together faces a great danger of gradual unraveling. Unabashed disregard for virtuousness on one hand and a fear of God or inherent virtue on the other; a fifty percent possibility of any outcome no matter what path you choose, as summarized in the paradox above, quoted by St. Augustine.

In one devastating scene, James strikes an innocuous conversation with a little girl in an isolated area. Her father soon enters the scene and instead of looking at James as a possible protector, reacts with furious anger and questions his motives. James' reaction is that of utter frustration and sadness, and he is unable to fathom the depths to which the image of the church has plunged; the extent to which the healthiest of bonds are looked down upon with gross doubts of misconduct.

In the midst of all this, the motivations and purpose of the church are questioned, especially in the wake of some shocking sex scandals. The meaning of forgiveness is questioned, when Father James says that his ex-pupil, a dreaded serial killer in jail deserves absolution much like any other human being, despite his confession that he enjoyed brutalizing his victims! The debate between fair and unfair is seen from a tricky perspective, when a very good man suddenly dies in an accident and his wife, perhaps with a hint of sarcasm says that what happened to her husband is not unfair. It's just something that happened. Others who aren't good people, who don't love or feel love, continue to live on. Now that's unfair!

In one clever instance, James advises a young, inept loner, Milo (Killian Scott), against joining the army, for the conditions didn't deem it necessary for anyone to join the army unless they wanted to know how it's like to kill someone. "Thou shalt not kill" is the word. "What about self defense?", young Milo quips! James is visibly faced with a question mark and admits that it is an exception. Words of these youngsters suddenly make sense to him and perhaps fleeting thoughts cross his mind, about whether these religious teachings indeed hold any water and whether right and wrong could ever be classified as black and white. 

Thrown into the mix is James' suicidal daughter Fiona (Kelly Reilly), who is surprisingly met with some more gallows humour from the village folk about how she botched up the wrist-slitting action! She is battling with a lost love and lost parents, thanks to her father giving up the family life and becoming a priest. But in a very strange, but beautiful twist following the film's shattering climax it is hinted that she has inherited her father's nature. 

Most of the people James gets in touch with, find no solace or respite after their discussion with him. People seem to be troubled but their troubles are converting them to stones and as humanity erodes away, an exasperated James decides to take a vacation. In a splendid, cleverly timed scene concerning a coffin and its carriers, James witnesses the peak of human detachment. Perhaps this sight becomes his epiphany, the last nail in the coffin that makes him confirm his path and seals his fate. 

Anchored by Brendan Gleeson's electrifying performance, "Calvary" boasts of a soulful score, breathtaking cinematography capturing some picturesque Irish country landscapes, and a sharp script featuring an eclectic medley of characters. Some of the characterization may seem a little over the top, but it all goes well with the darkly comic flavour of the film that is used to top up an otherwise tragic character portrait. James is not the gravest of characters either. He maintains his cool for the most part, appears to be full of dry wit, even when his limits are tested, and there are outbursts. He is aware that he is nothing like Jesus Christ who died for the sins of the world. But could the confessor's threat be a means for him to offer himself as the Lamb of God to redeem the ghastly sins of the church and of his entire village?

He does mention in the end, in that one statement that could make the viewer sit down and ponder. "I think there's too much talk about sins, not enough about virtues. Forgiveness is a virtue that has been highly underrated".

Score: 9/10