The Great Beauty
An aging playboy experiences an awakening.
Directed by Paolo Sorrentino
(Not rated)
****
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
This “very entertaining” Italian import is essentially a variation on La Dolce Vita, said Jon Frosch in TheAtlantic.com. Like Federico Fellini’s 1960 masterpiece, it provides an uncompromising portrait of Rome’s elite, which in 2013 means “lavish, champagne-soaked, techno-thumping parties” and mornings after that “echo with regret.” Our guide through this decadent world is an aging womanizer and celebrity journalist who learns early on in the film that his first love has died, said David Thomson in The New Republic. The news changes him: He schmoozes less at parties, and wanders the streets appreciating his city’s beauty. When star Toni Servillo smokes a cigarette, “he inhales all of life,” personal ups and downs included. “There are moments of melancholy” in this “wildly inventive ode” to personal sensibility, said Manohla Dargis in The New York Times. “Mostly though, there is beauty reborn,” as the director’s cameras “fly through Rome, knocking the dust off the city’s monuments,” and reminding us that wherever we are, “we are only passing through” and “had better make the most of it.”
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
-
Why UK scientists are trying to dim the Sun
In The Spotlight The UK has funded controversial geoengineering techniques that could prove helpful in slowing climate change
By Abby Wilson
-
Gandhi arrests: Narendra Modi's 'vendetta' against India's opposition
The Explainer Another episode threatens to spark uproar in the Indian PM's long-running battle against the country's first family
By Harriet Marsden, The Week UK
-
How the woke right gained power in the US
Under the radar The term has grown in prominence since Donald Trump returned to the White House
By Chas Newkey-Burden, The Week UK