The Great Beauty and I - A Film Review by Otto Marasco

In a mischievous manner, is it perverse of me to find myself drawn to the dysfunctional world of Jep Gambardella?


I knew little of The Great Beauty – La Grande Bellezza – before deciding to view it. "Sexy, provocative, haunting and extravagant" are a sample of the many descriptors employed by reviewers. Speaking of reviews, this is not to be deemed one; on the contrary, consider it a short attempt to interpret the effect of some of its constituent parts as experienced by and, through the eyes of its principal character, Jep Gambardella on the viewer, yours truly - Sapientia et Doctrina.

Excuse me for not bothering about the plot, I suggest you either watch the film or, read one of the many reviews. My first encounter with this film was via the trailer, taking pleasure in that opening party scene as I thought, ah the Italians, good at having escapist fun, forgetting there every day tomorrow.

Without wishing to sound hackneyed, I feel obliged to state that The Great Beauty's vibe and ambience harks to La Dolce Vita. I did not write this because everyone in the industry has already stated it. It is because I have long owned a copy of Federico Fellini’s classic, not that I enjoyed his construct as much, though I will pull it off the shelf again soon.

In short, I found The Great Beauty uplifting but, in a disconcerting way, being consciously aware of an ever-present melancholy undercurrent within Jep that could be felt, not merely understood; a credit to the director, Sorrentino. In my personal case, I could not only understand it, but I could also feel it and do, most nearly all days of late.

The people mix surrounding Jep at events, outdoor theatres and parties intrigued me. There were few perfectly formed Hollywood like twenty something’s to be seen instead, we are offered a surprising mix of older types, Jep at 65 and those immediately around him middle-aged and older. A smart mix since the supposedly seasoned can also be silly, asinine, immature, senseless and crazy at times, undeniably they can be raw, barbaric and loutish as well just like their younger counterparts. Jep’s crown, high society cultured and yet, so philistine.

In a mischievous manner, is it perverse of me to find myself drawn to the dysfunctional world of Jep Gambardella? Far removed from my own existence and that of many my age, nevertheless, I often crave an alternate reality as a much-needed diversion, even if only for a few short months as a counter to the daily humdrum. We do want to reach end days and be able to say, I have lived!

I could do with a dose of meaningless living and outright unabashed hedonism, I can be dead while alive, I can be Jep, I can be "Jeppino", a dark secret perhaps, the tag line if you like.

Jep turns 65 early in the film and through a series of seemingly innocuous events, he begins reflecting on his life and he does not appear comfortable, has he awoken, faced the truth, opened his eyes? I opened mine long ago but have I opened them wide enough?. To think about and reflect on one’s own, to step out of self, to think about one's thinking, to look at, as opposed to merely looking can be oh so revealing, enlightening. It is like having two selves co-existing, one real the other imagined looking at the whole, trying to make sense where sometimes sadly, there may be no sense to be found. "Imagined" but nonetheless important, for when we begin doing this we are living, we understand and accept the truth and begin feeling the hurt then, with any luck, we smile regardless, for we accept that this is life, our lives. I am not suggesting that I am happy nor that I am unhappy, I am simply though somewhat unenthusiastically accepting reality. In Jep's words,

"It all settled beneath the chattering and the noise, silence and sentiment, emotion and fear ... and then the wretched squalor and miserable humanity" 

Jep also appears to be experiencing that thought and the accompanying feeling, vita non realizzata, - life unfulfilled - not a pleasant thought.

I wonder why the film opened with that quote, the one that suggests that anything other than travel (because when we do this we do not settle down) is just a delusion and pain. Was it Jep’s view and modus operandi for the forty years that he partied in Rome?

A couple of things stood out for me, The Great Beauty can have the effect of making it's viewers think about their lives, for some critically for others perhaps casually and, it's a good showcase of excess cheeky though realistic adult kitsch…

Click here and here to read some notable reviews

© 2014 - 2024 Ottavio Marasco. All rights reserved.

Related reading: Federico Fellini - 5 reasons He Still Matters

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No Human is Special

Those who have thought deeply about one’s place in the grand scheme of things have perhaps come across a written piece or two about our insignificance on this earthly plane save amongst those emotionally connected to us. It’s an argument based moderately on the enormity of the known universe. As a thought and better still, as a paradigm, it’s a healthy prescription and allows us to get on with life by acknowledging this form of meanness. A noble beau ideal.

In addition to the nothingness related and conferred to by the astrophysical perspective, we are also insignificant in terms of what life simply dishes out to us. We are not so special in fact, we are not special at all irrespective of what’s happening in our life at this present moment, or what’s happened in the past and, what’s in store for us. I’m not speaking spiritually rather in the practical what’s seen, heard, experienced and felt gist. Everything, every manner of human experience, good or bad, delightful or abhorrent has preceded you in others.

What is that you’re asking of me? The experiences to which I am referring? Too many to list! A life lived embodies an infinite sum of occurrences and happenstances and, the resultant feelings and emotions that arise from such. A tapestry is woven by the sum of experience by way of the hand we are dealt.

Are you in love, madly in love, in lust perhaps? A form of lust and love so intense that you believe it’s private and special, that no other couple could be so fortunate. You haven’t read James Joyce’s letters, the dirty and the most beautiful. Have you been subjected to what you believe is the worst of humankind? Perhaps you should learn more about the holocaust. Have you lost a dearest family member to a disease or accident? Lost a home to fire? Won a lottery? Are you mega-rich or, mega poor? Been wrongly incarcerated, witnessed a loved one being raped, climbed a peak actual or metaphorical? Ad infinitum … You are not the first to experience anything.

And pity those who espouse that feeling of being special as realised from the power conferred through their careers or whatever positions or stations in life they reside in, rather than, intrinsic values. Life isn’t concerned with an artificial sense of importance.

Whatever your present human condition, someone somewhere in the world today, or in the past, has been there, has felt the same uplifting and glorious or otherwise, miserable and depraved emotions. Whatever contemplation may surface that you are uniquely unlucky or lucky, blessed, exceptional, or special in some way, banish the thought, for someone has been there.

For all of us, life offers a ceaseless succession of experience and encounter providing trials, outcomes, lessons and the resultant emotions.

This should not be interpreted such that the sheer scale and continuum of the human experience and, the universe make living pointless. More accurately, it should be a wake-up call to rise above the noise of modern-day life with all its push-pull factors and to embrace the power that comes from not being special, from insignificance itself.

You are not special….

Ecclesiastes 1:9 What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.

To Love to die, To die to love

To love, is to accept that you have made an inescapable pact with grief. From Maria Popova, once referred to as, Cartographer of meaning in a digital Age a beautiful piece exploring what love and death share in the magic of life. 

Love and death come to us on common terms — unbidden and total, impervious to protest, naked of pretension. They also come to us entwined: Every love is a franchise of grief, for to love anything is to accept its loss — by a dissipation of ardor or of atoms, the atoms constellating the beloved or the atoms constellating us and the consciousness that does the loving, certain to one day go the way of every other consciousness and every other love that ever was and ever will be.

In some deep sense, this inevitability of loss is precisely what makes love so ecstatic — a concentrated experience of aliveness consecrated by its own perishability.

I have, more than once or twice, reflected on life post the loss of loved ones. A thought too painful to contemplate, a thought for which I cannot find a solution in ways I would normally. The only solace being that many before me have been forced against all known forces, to cross a similar, if not same bridge. Would it be better to escape the inevitability of grief by not loving? Isn't death part of the story of life itself? By removing one, you remove the other; life, love and loss entwined. 

Read the whole piece here

Three Notable Axioms

Recently I came across or to be precise, heard three notable axioms while watching one of my favorite shows. There is no need to mention which show here, and perhaps needless to add, the truisms are only notable on a personal level as based on my sum of life experiences and observations.

I shall avoid any exhaustive interpretation of each suffice to say, for mine they resonate as eternal truths, like if you will, being pertinent across the ages. I suggest that they be read with little expectation for it’s possible they will mean far less or, the opposite to you and broadly, other readers. 

1. Let me explain something to you that in your long life you have not yet had occasion to understand. Friendly relationships are dangerous, they lend themselves to ambiguities, misunderstandings and conflicts and always end badly, formal relations on the other hand are as clear as spring water, their rules are carved in stone, there is no risk of being misunderstood and they last forever … Where there are formal relationships there are rights and where there are rights the earth order reigns …
2. A man’s past sins are the very one’s he will commit in the future … because man is like God, he never changes …
3. I’m going to let you in on a secret, ever since I was little I’ve learned to confound people’s ideas about what is going on in my head ….

The first one, - and once again this is a personal interpretation – applies to professional relationships in the workplace, especially corporate where it is best to engage in rules based on rigid observance of internal culture, convention and/or etiquette.    

As for the second one, on a simple level it merely speaks of past behavior as a useful marker for future behavior, but I deduced a secondary connotation. Man has a dark and ominous underside, whether this reflects the archetypal male psyche is subject to much argument, still …

The third brings to bear the games we play as humans, the predictable interactions, the mind games that people engage in through a patterned and predictable set of transactions that always appear outwardly plausible to all present and involved but, which mostly conceal personal motivations.

Your views are most welcome …

Pale Blue Dot

Voyager 1, which had completed its primary mission and was leaving the Solar System, was commanded by NASA to turn its camera around and take one last photograph of Earth across a great expanse of space, at the request of astronomer and author Carl Sagan.

Pale Blue Dot is a photograph of the Earth taken from the Voyager in 1990 from 6 billion kilometres away. 

This iconic image was taken at the request of famous astronomer, Carl Sagan, as the engineers took one last look at their home planet, which appeared as a tiny dot against the vastness of space.

Carl Sagan opened our eyes to the meaning of this image and life on earth: On that dot “every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives.”
Seen from about 6 billion kilometers, Earth appears as a tiny dot (the blueish-white speck approximately halfway down the brown band to the right) within the darkness of deep space. 
Now follow the Brainpickings.org link in the tweet below, play the video at the site and then reflect on what Sagan says:

Sapientia et Doctrina ... 

Carl Sagan's iconic "Pale Blue Dot," animated in motion graphics https://t.co/7pSbndYSOB pic.twitter.com/2BLr6kjm28

— Maria Popova (@brainpicker) 24September,2016

A Notable Personal Introspection

Considering I was, and have been in varying extents silly, immature, anxious, cruel, reckless and impatient, egotistical, unprofessional, incompetent, irrational and simply bad most often. I refer to the age of 15 - 25 and, to a lesser though still significant extent, between the age of 25 – 35, and again to a lesser but still significant extent, between the age of 35 – 45, and yet again, to a lesser extent from the age of 45 onward .... I am now fantastically successful in my mid fifties.

As I reflect on this, I also realize that at core, I always knew where the “off” button was, I knew when to draw the line, I knew how to maintain the fundamentals right, e.g. marrying the right girl, buying a home, keeping a job, keeping my financials in order etc. I also knew how to maintain appearances and create righteous facades. Nonetheless, this does not diminish the fact that I was, at times very irresponsible, and came too close to outright sabotage and yet, given where I am at this time, being August 2016, in totality I am fantastically successful, in spite of my past foolish idiosyncrasies.

The other realization is that the first paragraph reveals improvement as I grew older, and this is the inspiring feature of my being, better late than never, constant and never-ending improvement to become the man, person, and “individual” I am today.

I am tempted to list the acts that constitute the “foolish idiosyncrasies” to which I refer, however this may not be a worthwhile exercise, more to the point, I feel it would be self-defeating. 

One way to make amends is to continue growing, becoming better and ultimately more successful still...

A Good Enough Life

I am getting on, it is time to take some stock, to pause, reflect and map for I am embedded within an age bracket known as the early fifties, and how do I know?

Apart from the obvious, that I was born a few months after the construction of the Berlin Wall, read again, I did not say fall of the Berlin Wall! Moreover, how palpable it is, when I gaze into the mirror each morning, not to mention the many small impromptu reminders that present. Like when Twitter notifies me that I have a new follower today. Eager to see who, I touch the little white birdy on my smart phone screen and presto, the new follower is, The 50+ Feed with a profile that reads, “A steady feed of news, commentary and resources relevant to the culture, legacy, health, happiness, wisdom and well being of today's 50+ population”.  I'm drawn to the term legacy, so follow back.

Advice is good and though my life is not travelling that smooth, – I have teenage kids – I know that nobody can say theirs is perfect, not unless they lie. Still, my ever-evolving life on this mortal plane with its diminishing highs and incessant lows, the latter seemingly so low as to be of a subterraneous quality of late, has taught me a thing or two. Therefore, as I now enter the second half of my early 50’s, I have concluded that I am in the midst of a good enough life, and have compiled a small, not so insignificant inventory of lessons that smooth my path in this fluid, constructed and yet unconstructed, chaotic though organised reality.

• Have you heard the expression or idiom, “are you finished?” or, “all done?” well sorry to say, but in life it is never done, nothing is ever complete
• Life is great but some days are boring, mundane and routine
• Sometimes you have to do so much to achieve so little, kind of like, eating an artichoke 
• It is more than okay if your home is in a mess even though, the infomercial world tells us that it must always present like a showroom 
• There is nothing more pointless or common than doing the same things over and over, but expecting different results
• When people ask, “how are you?’ and you reply, “I’m good yourself?” or worse still, you reply like those Boston, New England types with the irritable “excellent you?” I can assure you, they know you really mean, life sucks  
• It is probably a good idea to tell those you care about that you love them, though sometimes it is also a good idea to refrain from such, let them sweat a tad
• Whenever restless or anxious in bed remember, sleep eventually comes though maybe not tonight
• If you occasionally think monogamy is tough it’s okay, the storm will eventually pass, but careful what you get up to in storms eye
• You are ultimately, what you do, not what you say you will do
• Any relationship is selfishly controlled by the one who cares least
• Feelings follow behaviour
• Not all who wander are lost – are your kids or a family members failing at school or withering in some endeavour? Many hippies and counterculture types that rebelled in the late 60’s eventually became successful white-collar professionals later in life
• Sometimes you hate those you love 
• You can survive without daily to do lists
• Promise yourself, that you will punch the lights out of the next person that says, ‘a new paradigm of thought’
• Sometimes you are just too damn busy to catch up with friends and if they do not understand, they were not your friends after all
• Family life is tough
• You can feel guilty for doing what is right like going to work, though equally, you can feel guilty for not going to work
• As you get older, you grow smaller, an obvious oxymoron
• If it helps, it is okay to suggest that your wife shop at Victoria’s Secret and if she does not get it, she should
• Red wine is tonic
• If you feel the others have normal lives then you do not know them well
• If you do not plan for or schedule sex, it’s probably not going to happen
• Sometimes 2-minute noodles are okay for tea, or if you are of Italian derivative, pasta e burro is fine to
• We have choices and the advertising world pounds this in us. Moreover, if for a moment, you thought that advertisers pay us little or no attention think again. Recall all those insurance, funeral plan and retirement village ads you hear on those easy listening stations
• Dark chocolate is bliss the more cocoa the better  
• How others perceive you ought not to be of concern
• Vigorous exercise is the best antidepressant, vigorous sex better still
• Growing old is not avoidable  
• You think life sucks until the doc utters the word cancer
• Health is king!
• Lists are for losers

Comments always welcomed

© 2014 Ottavio Marasco. All rights reserved.