| The Great Beauty |
[Jan. 17th, 2015|10:12 am]
Tony Grist
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Toni Sorvino- playing a funny little Capote-like writer turned journalist- wanders round Rome reflecting on the life he's frittered away. He looks like Woody Allen but without the anxiety- and Rome looks beautiful and heartless- a wasteland of marble- the graveyard of thousands of years of human vaingloriousness.
In a tiny lamplit corner of a huge reception room three tiny old women sit at a table playing cards. Buona sera, principessa
A 65 year old man finds out there's more to life than going to parties. Yes, fine, but I made that discovery while I was still a kid. So where's the beef?
This movie won all the prizes last year- including the Oscar for best Foreign Language Movie- and I'm not entirely sure why. Maybe the critics were indulging their nostalgia for Fellini and Antonioni. Because if you know those two guys you'll have seen this sort of thing before. And even though it's not badly done by Sorrentino and his team, the old timers did it better. Antonioni was bleaker and Fellini wilder and more impassioned. |
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