The Great Beauty

Plot

The film opens with a quote from Louis-Ferdinand Céline's novel Journey to the End of the Night: "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. People, animals, cities, things – all are imagined. It's a novel, just a fictitious narrative. Littré says so, and he's never wrong. And besides, in the first place, anyone can do as much. You just have to close your eyes. It's on the other side of life."

Jep Gambardella is a 65-year-old seasoned journalist and theater critic, mostly committed to wandering among the social events of a Rome immersed in the beauty of its history and in the superficiality of its inhabitants today, in a merciless contrast. He also ventured into creative writing in his youth: he is the author of only one work called The Human Apparatus. Despite the appreciation and the many awards he received, Jep has not written other books, not only for his laziness but above all for a creative block from which he cannot escape. The purpose of his existence has been to become a "socialite", but not just any socialite, but "the king of society".

Jep is surrounded by several friends: Romano, a playwright who is perpetually on the lead of a young woman who exploits him; Lello, a mouthy and wealthy toy seller; Viola, a wealthy bourgeois and mother of a son with serious mental problems named Andrea; Stefania, a self-centred radical chic writer; Dadina, the dwarf editor of the newspaper where Jep works.

One morning, he meets the husband of Elisa, a woman who has been Jep's first and probably only love: the man announces that Elisa has died, leaving behind only a diary in which the woman tells of her love for Jep; thus, her husband discovered that he had been a mere surrogate for 35 years, nothing more than "a good companion". Elisa's husband, now afflicted and grieved, will soon find consolation in the affectionate welcome of his foreign maid. After this episode, Jep begins a profound and melancholic reinterpretation of his life and a long meditation on himself and on the world around him. And, above all, he thinks about starting to write again.

During the following days, Jep meets Ramona, a stripper with a personal secret, and Cardinal Bellucci, in whom an interest in cooking is more present than in his Catholic calling; Jep is gradually convinced of the futility and uselessness of his existence. Soon his "vicious circle" also breaks down: Ramona, with whom he had established an innocent and profound relationship, dies of a terminal disease; Romano, disappointed by the deceptive attractiveness of Rome, leaves the city, seeking out only Jep to say goodbye to; Stefania, socially humiliated by Jep, who had revealed her secrets and highlighted her hypocrisy, parts Jep's social friend circle. Viola, on the other hand, after the death of her son, donates all her possessions to the Church and becomes a missionary in Africa.

Just when hopes seem to abandon Jep once and for all, he is saved by a new episode: after a meeting, pushed by Dadina, who wants to get an interview with a "Saint", a Catholic missionary nun in the Third World, Jep goes to Giglio Island to report on the shipwreck of the Costa Concordia. Right here, remembering his first meeting with Elisa in a flashback, a glimmer of hope rekindles in him.

Reception

Italian Criticism

Philippe Ridet, Rome correspondent for Le Monde, criticized the film in Internazionale while supporting the perspectives of journalists from La Stampa, Raffaella Silipo and Gianni Riotta:

The victory of Italy? Yes, but which Italy? 'The Americans imagine Italy exactly like this,' Raffaella Silipo noted last Monday in La Stampa: 'Magnificent stones and inconclusive inhabitants, young people fleeing, and old people painting themselves and forgetting as they dance.' On Tuesday, La Stampa’s Gianni Riotta evoked a reward that 'sounds like a warning': 'Sorrentino signs the film of an Italy resigned to lacking credibility. Let’s continue like this, and we’ll end up as elegant vagabonds looking at the past, maybe winning plenty of Oscars, but without a dignified future.'

But the six thousand voters in Hollywood are like this. They love Italy for how they imagine it, just like all the jury members who awarded the film across the world before its triumph in Los Angeles. 5 May 2014.

Ridet's perspective was countered in an article by Tiziano Peccia for the Brazilian academic journal O Olho da História. The article, dedicated to beauty, followed the death of Umberto Eco:

Philippe Ridet’s vision taints the intelligence of the peninsula with grotesque and superficial tones, reducing Italy to the idea of celebrating its own decadence. His statement, drawn from his article 'Italy laughs at seeing itself in the mirror of La Grande Bellezza,' stereotypes the average Italian as a Griffolino d’Arezzo from Dante’s Divine Comedy, a character full of airs despite his infernal placement.

Yet, we must ask ourselves a question: Was this Sorrentino’s message? Did the Neapolitan director aim to emphasize the theme of Italian decadence, as denounced by the media? Or rather, more profoundly, was his focus on the modern and worldly frenzy that seduces, beguiles, entices, and then leaves one burdened with a handful of shattered, cursed dreams?

The fact that a film like La Grande Bellezza can be interpreted as a limited picture of Italian issues smells, to borrow expressions from journalist Marco Travaglio, of rhetoric and provincialism. It’s the provincialism of a people probably no longer accustomed to hearing about themselves in a positive or meritocratic light—a nation that turns into mockery a well-crafted work appreciated globally. This widespread provincialism is a new fruit for a country like Italy, accustomed to millennia of greatness and artistic production recognized and esteemed everywhere.

Critical response

The film has a 91% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 135 reviews, with a weighted average rating of 8/10. The website's critical consensus states, "Dazzlingly ambitious, beautifully filmed, and thoroughly enthralling, The Great Beauty offers virtuoso filmmaking from writer/director Paolo Sorrentino." The film holds a score of 86/100 on Metacritic based on 34 reviews, signifying "universal acclaim".

Robbie Collin at The Daily Telegraph awarded Sorrentino's film the maximum five stars and described it as "a shimmering coup de cinema". He likened it to Roberto Rossellini's Rome, Open City and Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita in its ambition to record a period of Roman history on film. "Rossellini covered the Nazi occupation of 1944; Fellini the seductive, empty hedonism of the years that followed. Sorrentino's plan is to do the same for the Berlusconi era," he wrote. Deborah Young of The Hollywood Reporter stated "Sorrentino's vision of moral chaos and disorder, spiritual and emotional emptiness at this moment in time is even darker than Fellini's (though Ettore Scola's The Terrace certainly comes in somewhere)." Critics have also identified other purposefully explicit film homages: to Roma, 8½, Scola's Splendor, Michelangelo Antonioni's La notte. Spanish film director Pedro Almodóvar named the film as one of the twelve best films of 2013, placing it second in his list. In 2016, the film was ranked among the 100 greatest films since 2000 in an international critics poll by 177 critics around the world. It is currently director Paolo Sorrentino's second highest rated film on Rotten Tomatoes. In 2025, it was one of the films voted for the "Readers' Choice" edition of The New York Times' list of "The 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century," finishing at number 220.

Film critics' top lists

Various critics named the film as one of the best of 2013.

1st: Time Out London's 10 Best films of 2013

1st: Robbie Collin, The Daily Telegraph

2nd: Xan Brooks, The Guardian

2nd: Richard Corliss, Time

3rd: Chris Vognar, The Dallas Morning News

4th: Sight & Sound

4th: Lisa Schwarzbaum, BBC

6th: Jake Coyle, Associated Press

7th: Stephen Holden, The New York Times

8th: Simon Abrams & Alan Scherstuhl, The Village Voice

9th: Robert Gifford, The Diamondback

9th: Empire's 50 Best Films of 2013

Best films of 2013: Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

Best Film of 2013: Justin Chang, Variety

Peter Bradshaw also named the film as one of the 20 best films of the 21st Century in the Guardian.