The Great Beauty - a contemporary La Dolce Vita, and perhaps another classic

Paolo Sorrentino's The Great Beauty is absolutely one of the best and most provocative movies I've seen in years and will, I hope, be recognized in time as a classic (I don't know anything at all about Sorrentino's other work, but plan to watch one of the "extras" in the great Criterion Collection DVD to learn more). I'm positive that everyone who's written anything about The Great Beauty has commented on its debt to and tribute to La Dolce Vita - it's quite obviously a contemporary look at similar themes and emotions, with quite a few visual tributes to Fellini along the way. Like LDV, TGB focuses on the life of man in late career as he lives an active perhaps over-active social life and reflects on his lost opportunities. In TGB it's a famous journalist, Jep, who, in a fabulous opening sequence of a rocking and opulent party with many beautiful people and others verging on the grotesque (another nod to Fellini) is celebrated on his 65th birthday. One major difference between TGB and LDV is that Jep is not a man in despair - he has a great self-image, he refuses to be swayed by the flattery of others, he accepts that his lifetime of writing magazine profiles does not mark him out for any special recognition. He knows everyone in Rome, it seems, but does he know himself? He has written one short novel that others seem to think very highly of - although he's dismissive, and it doesn't bother him at all when others call it his "novelette." The mystery is why he hasn't written any further serious fiction - he indicates that he has been unable to find the "great beauty" that will inspire him to take up serious writing again. There will be no spoiler here, but I will say that he does find the great beauty at the end of the film, in a moment that, to me, echoed one of my favorite works, Flaubert's Sentimental Education - but I'll leave it at that. There are so many fantastic scenes throughout the movie, with dialog as strong and complex as in any excellent novel - one particularly strong scene is the discussion among Jep and some literary friends in which a woman who sees herself as a socially engaged writer criticizes Jep for his non-engagement and he, in response, rips her apart in the coolest, most understated way imaginable. The cinematography is extraordinary - so many beautiful scenes of Rome by night, many from the terrace and balcony of Jep's apartment near the Coliseum - and the beauty continues right down to the closing credits, filmed on a slow boat ride down the Tevere/Tiber. Even the music is great - sometimes overwhelming techno dance music, appropriate to the scene, and elsewhere just a fine, subtle musical score. And was that Simon Signorette in an uncredited cameo? The plot structure is a little demanding, nontraditional - although straightforward in time, it involves so ellisions and some rapid introduction of characters that it may take viewers some time to piece together into a whole - but it's a complex movie that rewards serious attention.