2013 Winner, The Great Beauty

The Great Beauty

Director: Paulo Sorrentino, 

Distributed by:  Medusa Film

Released:  May 2013

Country:  Italy

You never hear people who've been to Rome come back home and call it a dump.  I think Rome is one of those places people are more likely to come at you with one of those trite "look-at-me-I-travel" phrases: “Have you ever been?  You simply have to!  It’s beautiful!”  I’ve never felt the urge—maybe I just don’t get Rome.  The Great Beauty cinematically presents The Eternal City as a party town, kind of a European Las Vegas, Italian-style.  It’s certainly flashy and seems like a lot of fun, but beauty is only skin deep, no?

First Love:  Bellissima

So what is “The Great Beauty”?  After watching this 142-minute spectacle of a film my truthful answer is, “Hell if I know.”  It could be the cinematography of this wonderfully-shot Italian movie, which should probably be seen on the big-screen, with all the bacchanalia and vivid color of modern Rome at night.  Maybe it could be the distant, sad but sweet memory of an innocent first love lost.  Or, it may have nothing to do with aesthetics at all; maybe it’s just the wisdom of a 100-year old nun.

Old Nun:  Bellissima?

Whatever it is, Jep Gambardella is looking to find it.  Jep is a 65-year old writer; or really, was a writer, having written an acclaimed novella when he was a young man.  Now he spends wads of lira, or euros, or whatever they spend in Rome these days, throwing huge parties and hanging out with the cool people.  They keep coming to his parties because Jep is a pretty hip guy; plus the vino and the roast beef, or whatever they serve at parties in Rome, is free.

 

Like the movie, there is not much of a plot to Jep’s life,
and lately, he’s feeling a bit empty.  The parties are boring him and his relationships and friendships are all pretty thin gruel, or whatever they eat for breakfast in Rome.  Jep cracks wise, dances in congo lines, and is a friend to everyone, but he doesn't seem to have any aim in life.  

I’m sure there is some artsy reason for the filmmaker having Jep befriend his friend’s stripper daughter and attend a funeral with her, but I couldn’t figure it out really.  Honestly, I couldn’t figure out a lot of this movie, which I chalk up to my amateur status as a foreign film reviewer, but I did enjoy watching it.  I liked Jep—you can’t not like his wit and his overall good manner—but I was never sure what he was trying to figure out.

The Great Beauty is one of those highly acclaimed European films dumb Americans like me never quite understand.  But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a great beauty in this film to be found.

Bellleeeezzzeemah!!

The Title:  La grande bellezza.  Reminds me of the SNL bit when Dana Carvey as a waiter ogles, gropes, and even licks the face of Kirstey Alley, calling her Bell-eeeezzz-ee-mah.

 

Culture:  You do get to see the beauty of the city a little, but I walked away thinking Romans were all freeloaders who do nothing but party, have random sexual encounters, and engage in witty repartee.  On second thought, maybe I should check this place out.

Agenda danger: The message of the movie seems to be that real beauty is not superficial.  There is a little bit of poking fun at a Catholic bishop who is more worried about helping people find good recipes than finding grace; but I think it’s mostly harmless, and offset by the goodness shown by the very old Mother Theresa-like nun.

Best Picture that year:  12 Years a Slave

Rating:  I give it three of five meatballs, or whatever they use to rate movies in Rome.

1974 Winner, Amarcord

Amarcord

Director:  Federico Fellini

Distributed by:  Warner Bros./New World Pictures

Released:  December 1973

Country:  Italy

Going backward chronologically with our Best Foreign Films, now is when we get into the Italian and French dominance of the award.  No other country would win more than three times  from the inception of the award to 1974, while Italy won 11 and France 9 during that time period.  The director of Amarcord, the 1974 Best Foreign Film, is known as one of the great directors of all cinema, Federico Fellini, and this one is the last of his three films that won the award. 

I’ll start with this:  You don’t have to know anything about movies to know, after just a few minutes of watching this film, that Fellini is a master director.  The photography is wonderful, with scenes in school, church, the town square, and the coast, that are all marvelously shot.  You can see his influence over the art:  The scenery often reminded me of 1990’s winner Cinema Paradiso, 2013 winner The Great Beauty, and 1998’s Life is Beautiful.   Francis Ford Coppola must have also been influenced by Fellini, as one scene in the country brought a couple different The Godfather locations to my mind, though that great film was made two years earlier than Amarcord. (The fact that Nino Rota, frequent Fellini collaborator, did the score for both Amarcord and The Godfather probably had something to do with it as well.)

Titta (right) with his father and grandfather

I start with all that stuff about the scenery in part because there isn’t much of a linear plot here.  This is more like a snapshot of small town, pre-World War II north-central Italy.  Mussolini is in power and fascism has its clutches around Italy, but these small-town people have their lives to lead.  There is a vast cast of eccentric characters, but the focus is mostly on teenage boy Titta, presumably based on Fellini himself, and his family.  Titta’s dad is especially blustery and funny, looking remarkably like the guy who used to wake up early to make the Dunkin Donuts.  He always seems to be angry, either at Titta, or at his freeloading brother-in-law, or at his half-witted brother who won’t come down from a tree he’s climbed. 

There are scenes in the classroom that reminded me of stuff you may have seen in the Little Rascals, only a bit more PG-13.  At one point, while a bookish-looking kid is up at the chalkboard with the teacher struggling with a math problem, some mischievous boys construct and extend a long paper tube, one boy peeing into it from his classroom desk, sending a puddle next to the unsuspecting nerd.  The tube disposed of before she notices, the teacher looks down at the floor and then the student and yells, “What do you do?!” It's one of those immature pranks that you laugh at and wonder why you didn't think of it when you were young, and then think it's probably better that you didn't.

Looking for something?

Fellini, or rather young Titta and his friends, are obsessed with sex, and more specifically, with women’s butts and breasts.  Close-ups of women’s rears appear frequently in the film, with the boys and men gazing longingly.  There is one amusing scene when a female shop-worker encounters Titta and unleashes her breasts on him, nearly killing poor Titta and no doubt requiring Fellini to use a wide-angle lens. (A look at the movie poster will give you a clue at what I mean--that cartoon really isn't a caricature.)  In another scene, an aging but still attractive hairdresser whom all the town boys have the hots for finds herself sitting next to Titta in an otherwise empty movie theater.  As he moves his hand onto her slightly exposed thigh she snarkily asks, “Looking for something?”

Armacord as a whole can be taken as a critique of an Italy that allowed a fascist’s rise to power.  Some of the more serious scenes involve the struggle for these townspeople to deal with the choice they had with fascism—go with it or get run over by it.  It strikes me, though, that Fellini is presenting rural life much more lovingly and nostalgically than that.  Yes, the Catholic priests are tone deaf to the needs of the people; yes, the boys spend all their time thinking of girls; and yes, there are few weirdos who are part of the fabric of the place.  But it seems like this was a simpler time, and I think given how colorfully and brilliantly the movie is shot, it would be difficult to not like this small Italian town.

The Title:  A kind of made-up Italian word meaning, “I remember.”

Time to make the donuts!

The Culture:  This was a time between the great wars, in small town Italy, and Fellini presents us with the naivety of the time.  Everyone knows each other in this odd cast of characters:  the priests and teachers; the round-reared hairdresser; the odd nymphomaniac who hangs around; and the strange town character who talks to the camera from time to time. They all make up the time and place Fellini remembers.

Agenda danger:  Fellini, a non-practicing Catholic himself, seems to be critical of the Church, of Catholic education, and of the way the Church viewed sex.  But I found this presentation to be mostly an accounting of how it was then, and not a condemnation of the time he grew up in.  Titta’s father, a comic figure overall, stands up to the fascists admirably, as few must have in the time.

Best Picture that year:  The Godfather, Part II

Rating:  I must say I was a little confused by this once I finished it:  What was the story?  What did it mean?  But it was a film that was enjoyable to watch from start to finish, and it stuck with me a little after I was done, which I believe to be the mark of a great film. 

Introduction to My BFF Project

My BFF Project

“There is a prejudice, perhaps understandable, against going to see a movie made in a foreign language.”  --William F. Buckley

For me, it's always seemed a chore to go see a foreign film.  The only place that would show these movies was on the other side of town at the art house theater.  Plus, if I wanted to read, I’d get a book.  Who wants to plop their money down and then have to work the entire time you're in the theater?  And to be honest, I sort of put foreign films into the same category as NPR, opera, and wine-sipping—things that, in my mind, a lot of people do to make themselves feel smarter than everyone else.

Two things changed my mind on this.  First, I read an autobiography of someone who described an event in his life as a Rashomon moment.  I had no idea what he meant, so I looked it up and found he was referring to an iconic Japanese film made by a guy I had only heard of, Akira Kurosawa.  I cracked my library card out and the first chance I got clunked the tape into the VCR and sat through the 90 minute movie.  The film is about a crime being reported by four different observers, each with a completely different viewpoint that reflected the individuals' biases.  I thought, gee, I've seen this bit in at least three or four bad sitcom episodes, but this was actually pretty great!  I started to check out more Kurosawa—Ikiru, Seven Samaurai, Throne of Blood, Ran—I was hooked.  Maybe it was worth doing a little reading on the bottom of the screen after all.

Second, a few years ago I caught this mini-series documentary on Turner Classic Movies called The Story of Film, written and narrated by Mark Cousins.  Cousins seemed like a pretentious jerk, but man, he had done his homework.  He described all eras of film, but more importantly, he discussed and showed great cinema made far from Hollywood—pre-Hitler Germany, the multitude of genres from India, the great Japanese directors, the Hong Kong style, even great movies made in Iran.  I was intrigued.

I generally don’t watch the Academy Awards—the self-congratulations and political preachiness are too much for me to bear—but while channel-flipping I saw the presentation of the 2014 Oscar for Best Foreign Film, Ida, which was the first Polish movie to win.  I thought the director accepting the award, Paweł Pawlikowski, seemed pretty humble and grateful, a trait I don’t see much in the American winners, so I made a point of seeing his movie—and liked it.  Next I tried the 2013 winner, The Great Beauty, and then decided to find out how far backward I could go using my library card and the internet.  There are many, many great foreign films that never came close to smelling the Oscar, but I thought trying the award winners would be a good sampling.  

My BFF Project is the result of my little ongoing experiment.  My plan is to post a review a week going backward chronologically, starting with the Best Foreign Film from 2015's Academy Awards, Son of Saul.  Finding the movies was, of course, easy at first; everything is on DVD and available.  But as I have gone further back in time, it has been a little more difficult.  We'll see how it turns out.

The official title of the award is “Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film,” and films that qualify must not be made by an American filmmaker or be in English.  “Best Foreign Film” is a decent, if not wholly accurate shorthand name, which I neatly abbreviate as BFF.  Sure, these are foreign films I am reviewing, and you may at first think of me as a wine-sipping, NPR-listening, opera-loving snob.  But I assure you, I am more of a beer-gulping, sports-radio-listening, classic rock slob (even if I sometimes start my sentences with phrases like “I can assure you.”)  So who knows, if you read my weekly (?) reviews, maybe we can end up BFF's (Best Friends Forever)?  No, I don’t want that either.

In my reviews, besides a short critique of the films, I am including a few observations for each movie for you to ponder:

·       The Title.  If the title given is in English, I’ll give you the title in the language of the film, and possibly a note or two about the meaning.

·       Culture Watch.  One of the best aspects of a foreign film is seeing what it is like in the place being portrayed.  Does the film do that?  Could it be set anywhere, or did it have to take place there?  Did I learn anything about the culture?

·       Agenda Danger.  Hollywood isn’t known as a bastion of conservatism.  I don’t intend for this site to be about politics (HURRAY!), but in full disclosure, my feet are firmly planted on the soil on the right side of the ideological fence.  The question I am looking at is whether the film, voted on by Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, is trying to ram some political view down our throats, like Hollywood tends to do.  My conservative bias is bound to show itself from time to time, but I'll try to check it as much as I can.

·       Best Picture That Year.  Letting you know who won the big award that year to provide a little historical context.

·       My rating.  I won’t use stars or thumbs, at least not without irony, but I will let you know briefly how I grade it.  Read the review if you really are interested.

Any comments will be appreciated.  I have a thick skin, so if you are a film expert and you tell me I have no idea what I am talking about, I just won’t listen.  If you have never seen and never intend to see the films, feel free to use what you learn from my reviews to do all you can do to make yourself appear smarter and more sophisticated than your co-workers, friends, and spouses.   

I'll try to post these on Tuesdays, so the first one will be on June 28.