This is what we are watching: "The Great Beauty" - a cult film about the burden of the past from the great Sorrentino

In the new series Articles every week I talk about what films and TV shows struck me.

Paolo Sorrentino is a surprisingly unstable director. He can make a brilliant film and then come up with something unintelligible. There is an abyss between his best and worst pictures, “The Hand of God” is incomparably more successful than “Wherever You Are”, and there seems to be nothing in common between “Proof of Love” and “Loro”. But the "Great Beauty" towers over all his works.

In the best pictures of Sorrentino, the plot does not play a special role. "Great Beauty" is not even a story, but sketches from the life of an elderly Italian journalist. He wanders around Rome, meets old acquaintances, makes new ones, grumbles, is silent, recalls the past. At the same time, he has a strong feeling that he has already seen all this, just in other variations.

The Great Beauty piercingly demonstrates the problem of unfulfilled ambitions. The protagonist long ago accepted himself as a brilliant writer, but his last novel came out decades ago, and in reality he is an elderly secular journalist. But this does not mean that he does not know how to enjoy life. Just in the midst of fun, a feeling of helplessness and insignificance overtakes with the same ruthlessness as a toothache or pneumothorax.

The doom of the protagonist resonates with the splendor of the outside world, more precisely Rome. La grande bellezza is a beautiful, even too beautiful film. Sometimes cloying, but after all, the main character also wants cloying beauty, transcendent greatness, unconditional recognition. Perhaps it is precisely because of this background that his suffering is so serious - the Eternal City has a gigantic existential crisis, and not minor experiences.

The old beauties of Rome also serve as a reminder of other times, of greater eras. Well, the main character, to quote Brodsky, is “a man of a second-rate era.” A big and great story seems to oblige to be better, presses, and if it fails, it falls on the shoulders of a person.

Sorrentino cannot give an answer what to do with this burden of past centuries, but tries to find something in his own time. For example, the music of the Estonian classic Arvo Pärt and the Russian genius Vladimir Martynov. Their compositions not only emotionally complement the picture, but also show that the era is not so terrible, there is something in it.

Paolo Sorrentino was "lucky" to be born in a country that cannot let go of the classics - hence the incredibly fierce criticism of the director in Italy. Almost every review contains a comparison with Federico Fellini, of course - not in favor of a living author. Criticism directly intersects with the burden of the past, which puts so much pressure on the hero of "Great Beauty". But at the same time, the film gives hope that if you still look for something beautiful in your time, then perhaps something will be found. After all, if there is Arvo Pärt in this era, then the search is not useless.