Rome is exhausting. Not the city itself—though the cobblestones will ruin your shoes—but the version of Rome captured in Paolo Sorrentino’s 2013 masterpiece. The Great Beauty (originally La Grande Bellezza) is a film that feels like a hangover in a tuxedo. It’s loud. It’s lonely. It’s arguably the most visually stunning thing to come out of Italy since the Renaissance, and yet, it spends two hours telling you that all those visuals are basically a distraction from the fact that we’re all going to die.
Honestly? Most people miss the point. They see the sweeping shots of the Janiculum Hill or the high-fashion parties and think it’s a travelogue for the wealthy. It isn't. It’s a funeral.
The story follows Jep Gambardella. He’s a journalist who wrote one famous novel decades ago and then decided that being the "king of the high life" was easier than actually being an artist. He’s 65. He’s tired. When he finds out his first love passed away, the thin veneer of his party-boy lifestyle starts to crack. It’s a simple setup, but the execution is so dense with symbolism that you basically need a degree in art history and a bottle of gin to get through it the first time.
The Ghost of Federico Fellini
You can’t talk about The Great Beauty without talking about La Dolce Vita. It’s the elephant in the room. Critics love to call Sorrentino the heir to Fellini, and he doesn’t exactly hide it. Both films feature a journalist wandering through Rome, witnessing the decadence and the decay of the upper class.
But there’s a massive difference. Fellini’s Marcello was looking for something he hadn’t found yet. Jep? Jep has found everything and realized none of it matters.
Sorrentino’s Rome is a museum where the residents are the only things not preserved. The contrast is brutal. You have these ancient, eternal statues staring down at people doing the conga line to cheesy Euro-pop. It’s a specific kind of Italian nihilism. The film won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film for a reason: it captured a European identity crisis that felt both deeply local and strangely universal.
Why the Cinematography is a Trap
Luca Bigazzi, the cinematographer, deserves most of the credit for why this film stays in your brain. The camera moves constantly. It glides. It soars over the Tiber. It sneaks through keyholes.
This is intentional. The beauty is so overwhelming it’s meant to distract you, just like it distracts Jep. If the movie were ugly, Jep would have left Rome years ago. He stays because the environment is a sedative. You’ve got these incredible sequences, like the performance artist slamming her head into a stone bridge, or the "saint" who only eats roots, which feel like fever dreams. They are "the great beauty" Jep is looking for, but he’s looking for them in the wrong places.
The party scenes are particularly claustrophobic. They’re shot with such high energy—neon lights, pounding bass, botoxed faces—that they feel more like a nightmare than a celebration. It’s the visual representation of "trying too hard."
👉 See also: Christopher McDonald in Lemonade Mouth: Why This Villain Still Works
Jep Gambardella and the Myth of the "One Great Book"
Toni Servillo plays Jep with a permanent smirk that hides a lot of damage. It’s a masterclass in acting. He barely moves his face, yet you can feel the precise moment his heart breaks.
A lot of viewers ask: why didn't he write a second book?
The film gives a few answers, but the real one is buried in a conversation he has on a balcony. He says he was looking for "the great beauty" and couldn't find it. That’s a cop-out. He stopped writing because he was afraid. It’s easier to be a critic than a creator. In the world of The Great Beauty, everyone is a critic. They sit at long dinner tables and tear each other apart to feel superior.
There’s a famous scene where Jep systematically dismantles a woman’s ego at a dinner party. She’s bragging about her life as a mother and a writer, and he just... ends her. It’s savage. It’s one of the best-written monologues in modern cinema. But it also shows how miserable Jep is. He can’t stand someone else pretending to be happy because he knows how much work it takes to keep up the act.
The Religious Undercurrent
Italy and the Church are inseparable, and Sorrentino leans into this with a heavy dose of irony.
The Vatican is everywhere and nowhere. You see nuns playing in gardens and cardinals who care more about cooking recipes than saving souls. Cardinal Bellucci, who is supposed to be a great exorcist, is a running joke because he won't stop talking about braised duck.
Then you have "The Saint." She’s a 104-year-old woman who lived in the desert. She represents the "true" spiritual beauty that Jep is missing. When she asks him why he never wrote another book, and he gives his usual poetic excuse, she gives him the most practical advice in the whole movie: "I only eat roots because roots are important."
It sounds like nonsense. But in a city of people floating on the surface, someone who cares about the "roots" is the only one who is actually grounded.
✨ Don't miss: Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne: Why His Performance Still Holds Up in 2026
Real-World Influence: How it Changed Roman Tourism
Funny enough, the film actually created a "Great Beauty" tour in Rome. People wanted to see the hidden villas and the private gardens Jep visits.
The irony is thick.
The film is a critique of the superficiality of Rome, and it ended up becoming a marketing tool for that very superficiality. If you go to Rome today, you can find guides who will take you to the exact spot where the Japanese tourist faints at the beginning of the movie.
- The Janiculum Hill (where the film starts)
- The Palazzo Braschi
- The Villa Medici
- The keyhole at the Aventine Hill
These spots are stunning, sure. But if you watch the movie and your only takeaway is "I want to go there," you’ve basically become one of the characters Jep mocks.
Does it hold up in 2026?
Actually, it feels more relevant now than it did a decade ago. We live in an era of curated aesthetics. Instagram and TikTok are essentially mini-versions of Jep’s parties—everyone performing a version of "the great beauty" while feeling increasingly disconnected.
The film deals with the "blah, blah, blah" of life. That’s a literal quote from the end. Everything is just noise until you find the few things that are actually real. For Jep, it was a girl on a beach 40 years ago. For us, it might be something equally small.
Technical Mastery: A Note on the Soundtrack
The music is a weird mix. You have sacred choral music (like "I Lie" by David Lang) bleeding directly into "Far L'Amore" by Bob Sinclar.
It shouldn't work. It really shouldn't.
🔗 Read more: Chris Robinson and The Bold and the Beautiful: What Really Happened to Jack Hamilton
But this jarring transition is the heartbeat of the film. It represents the tension between the eternal and the temporary. The sacred music represents the Rome that stays; the dance music represents the people who are just passing through. If you listen to the soundtrack on its own, it’s a chaotic mess. In the context of the film, it’s a perfect sonic landscape for a mid-life crisis.
What Most People Get Wrong
The biggest misconception about The Great Beauty is that it’s a cynical movie.
It’s actually quite hopeful. It’s about the fact that even in a world full of fake people, bad art, and disappointing religion, there are still flashes of something real. You just have to be quiet enough to hear it.
The ending—which involves a sea of flamingos on a balcony—is surreal, but it’s the moment Jep finally stops talking. He stops being the "king" and starts being a human being again. He realizes that the "blah, blah, blah" is just the surface. Underneath, there’s a story worth telling.
Actionable Insights for Your Next Rewatch
If you’re going to sit down with this film again, or for the first time, don't try to follow the plot. There isn't much of one. Instead, look for these three things:
- The framing of the statues. Notice how often a stone face is "watching" a scene. It changes how you perceive the characters' vanity.
- The color palette. The film starts with vibrant, aggressive colors and slowly bleeds into softer, more natural tones as Jep moves toward his realization.
- The sound design. Pay attention to the silence. In a movie this loud, the moments where the sound drops out are where the most important things happen.
To truly appreciate what Sorrentino did here, you have to accept that you won't understand every reference. You don't need to know every Italian political scandal or every Roman poet to feel the weight of Jep’s regret. Just watch the way the light hits the water and remember that everything, eventually, ends. That’s the real beauty.
Stop looking for a "message" and just let the atmosphere sink in. The best way to experience the film is to treat it like a long walk through a city you love—sometimes you get lost, sometimes you get bored, but every once in a while, you see something that takes your breath away. That is enough.
Watch the film on a screen as large as possible. Turn off your phone. Let the "blah, blah, blah" fade away for two hours.