The Great Beauty (2013)

It made me cry for what my life has going through and what we pretend to live in the world and the most thing i liked in the world that i thought was bikes or mobiles but the inner me discovered was my childhood memory with my mother in the kitchen eating fried fishas the jep say he loves the smell of old mans house

This looks like to be the message of the movie or at least the opinion of its main character, Jep Gambardella, a journalist who has failed as a writer. He has nevertheless ambitions and opinions about life and the world in his beautiful house in Rome with a view to the Colosseum. But when he reaches 65 he realizes that he has wasted his life in mundane high society parties being much endeared by the women even at that age. He becomes then very disillusioned and seeks often refuge in memories and nostalgia of the past. All this develops itself in beautiful images and scenes of interiors and exteriors and beautiful film framings including of mundane parties and balls. There are also discussions sometimes superficial, sometimes deeper about human nature and the life and behaviour of this or that character. We must not forget that we are among high society members. No worker or proletarian is ever seen. We see a lot of characters sometimes very strange in terms of faces and behaviours. A good movie about life or at better its vacuity for those who think so.

This is one of the worst movies I have ever seen. I had to finish it in "mute" because I could not stand it. The characters are awful, the main one (Jeb) is just one piece of meat with a pair of eyes. The dialogs are so empty that they seem to have been written by a ten year old (with a zero IQ). How on earth could this movie win an Oscar? Were the judges high on "meth"? It seems quite likely that they were blinded by the beauty of Rome... Which is, just, sad. Because the photography in this movie is so flawless that, instead of making a beautiful documentary, they had to bore us to death with this sordid degeneration of the human being. Because Roman people are, as shown by the director, a bunch of provincial misogynistic sex-addicts dressed in Armani and Vera Wang, while talking and doing crap. Now, I can confirm that the Oscars are getting far too pretentious, lacking of any sort of taste. And that is because this movie is, simply, disgusting.

Decent, but uneven, Italian drama. A journalist/writer, Jep, turns 65 and starts to reminisce, plus ponder his life. What happens next is essentially several days in his life: his friends, interests and regrets.A movie which touches on many aspects of life: art, and how pretentious it can be, personal regret, friendship, finding meaning beauty in life. (The pretentiousness of art topic is examined with great hilarity in the scenes with the viaduct-head-butting performance artist - for me, the best passage of the movie. Quite ironic then that the movie also veers into pretentiousness from time to time).However, for all its good intentions and deeper meanings, the movie is quite uneven. There are scenes and moments of great profundity, emotion and/or humour, followed by scenes that add nothing and just seem to drag the story out. The movie is a roller-coaster ride of dullness and entertainment.Ultimately, quite watchable, with a good ending. It does require some perseverance though...Despite being far from perfect, The Great Beauty won Best Foreign Language Film at the 2014 Oscars. This despite the superb Danish film, Jagten/The Hunt, being nominated. The Hunt is a far better film. I guess the judges were sucked in by the Felliniesque style- over-substance and ode-to-Rome traits of The Great Beauty and felt obliged to give it the award. Would be sacrilegious to not give the award to a Fellini-like film...