THE STORY OF DECADENCE – PAOLO SORRENTINO’S ‘GREAT BEAUTY’

After 65 years of luscious life, what will you do in your arm chair? Yes, you really introspects about  your adventures and misadventures.   Jep Gambardella does the same, but with a touch of  genius .  At the advent of the coming dusk, he understands the absurdity of those long 65 years of doing nothing, virtually nothing, but giving freedom to his flesh.  He sees with the same eyes, the fate of almost all of his contemporaries who are also trapped in this vast vanity.  What was he searching for , all those years through his spilled blood, or through the body of a women or through a bottle of wine.  He had no answer.

At the very beginning, Sorrentino hints that he is not speaking of flesh, especially the one prevalent in the Roman society at that time.  The society that he portrayed was for him, only a vehicle to impart certain thoughts originated in his mind, during the devilish life that he had witnessed during his life time, not only in Rome, but in the whole world.  The film starts in a spiritual atmosphere, where a group of church girls chant the holy hymn especially in front of a blue pond of peace.  the holy church in the background and a group of foreign visitors admiring the structure and a guide giving them lessons.

The opening caption states ‘travel is useful, it exercises the imagination, all the rest is disappointment and fatigue. Our journey is entirely imaginary, that is its strength. It goes from life to death…………………………’. 

The same is true of pain in a negative sense.  If you have survived pain of a long duration, the travel to your past will be really thrilling, giving you unlimited joy for being survived such a situation.  Then your  life now will be somewhat like heaven.  This is just the mirror image of what Jep have seen and experienced, just the opposite.  As one man had put, WHEN THE FINAL HOUR COME, THE DESTITUTE AND THE TORTURED WILL BE HILARIOUS, BECAUSE HIS TIME OF AGONY IS ENDING.  But for a man who was immersed in the thrills of life, the balance left is a real hell, because he knew that he is going to lose it.

THE NO WORK CULTURE

The first thing we note is that there is NO WORK in the real sense of the word, at least in the world exposed before us.   At the beginning,  such a ‘no work’ man (a landscape photographer, not a professional) collapses before us, during his ‘no work’ – he was doing nothing, but simply photographing, that is not seeing.  And in this sense , everyone of them were distanced from the atmosphere they were living, including the luscious protagonist.  (you can identify yourself in this everyone, even though we are not a society of hedonists. But we can be one in the nearest future. If Sorrentino’s story is of the life expended by a nation, then it may better be a warning to others, who are yet to live that life in the nearest future)

IF YOU ARE SWIMMING ,

THEN YOU ARE TO BECOME WATER

It is about this partial life, that Sorrentino, wants to elaborate.  The superficial life expended in philosophy and debauchery, and the one who understands this in his 65^th anniversary.

THE SUNKEN VESSEL

In one of the sequences in the film, the protagonist inspects the sunken ship Costa Concordia. The camera pans from horizon, from top to bottom of the ship, as though it is a metaphor of something inevitable happened to him or to his country.   The whole plot is the story of a sunken ship, the sunken man being the one inhabiting the sunken planet. The story is the story of the decay of a society, not that of an individual.

Sorrentino said , IN ROME TODAY…………….’ There is a kind of lassitude that found its symbolic culmination in dancing , in conga lines,  in trying to seduce the beautiful woman of the moment or beautiful man of the moment’.  AND THIS IS THE CHARACTERISTIC OF HIS SOCIETY IN A SENSE, AND THAT IS TO BE THE CHARACTERISTIC OF EVERY SOCIETY OF  THE FUTURE.

THE VANISHING GIRAFFE

The modern world is a magic world, populated by vanishing Giraffes.   What we want are superficial expressions,  dazzling colors,  instant gratification of our wishes etc. etc.  A giraffe sniffs its food and rejects it if it does not tarry with its intestines, but we eat even plastic as our food.  We have lost our physical and mental abilities to ascertain what is good or what is bad.  We consume poison and digest it. Even our body is not aware of such things.

The fate of man is that he had no hope.  He is living in an incessant state of anxiety and fear.  He does not know the purpose of such unnecessary feelings, but it is there forever. He tries to discard it, but is more and more engulfed in it in that process.   Everyone, like Jep, is abandoned , because old age is a hell to everyone, even to those who are not even at the brim of that situation.  At the bar, Jep was once shocked to hear the question from an old lady

A world , where the prime motto  of everyone is the gratification of individual desires, is not a good world.  In such a world, all others , are mere tools to attain this goal and all those who are deprived of this faculties are discarded without regret.  If you are aged, it is better for you to die, and if you are child it is better for you become a youth early, or else your life will be in hell.  If you are penniless,  you are to swim against the tides or rules, to be out of this peril.  Or else you will be in the dustbin.  A heartless world is not a better abode for the helpless.

the film poses before you , the questions on the credibility of a nation, oh no. the credibility of the present day human society.  one can say that one is not part of this catastrophe, but when disaster occurs, the one immersed, and the one out of water, will equally perish.

WITH THE RUINS OF THE COLLOSIUM AT THE BACKGROUND THROUGH WHICH WE ARE TO TRAVERSE ALL THROUGH THIS TWO HOURS, GIVES US A FEELING THAT WE ARE TRAVERSING IN AN UNIVERSE WHICH IS FALLING APART DAY BY DAY.  WE ARE TO EVALUATE WHETHER HEDONISM  OR MANS WISH TO ACQUIRE MORE AND MORE IS THE REAL CULPRIT

The Great Beauty was out of competition at Venice film festival.  when the whole world accepted the story of a disaster, his own country rejected it.  the world likes birthday parties and it is not in a position to reverse the order.

(Will continue)