The Great Beauty: Italy’s inertia and neo-baroque aestheticism

Picarelli, Enrica 2015. The Great Beauty: Italy’s inertia and neo-baroque aestheticism. JOMEC Journal (8) , pp. 1-16. 10.18573/j.2015.10032

Preview

PDF - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives. Download (1MB) | Preview

Abstract

In an article published in the New York Times in the months preceding the U.S. premiere of Paolo Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty, Rachel Donadio looks at the movie as a commentary on the impasse that seems to paralyze Italy. Through this viewfinder, the journalist writes, Sorrentino sets the stage to have his say on ‘a culture that is blocked, resigned, embalmed in elegant decline’, where ‘inertia overwhelms all forward momentum’. As with other movies produced in the last two decades, most notably Nanni Moretti’s Il Caimano, The Great Beauty is part lament, part critique of all that is wrong with a country that the fiction identifies with its political leadership. Italian directors criticize the country’s pervasive atmosphere of inertia and decadence. Sorrentino has often remarked that although his films are not political per se, their representation is a critique of Italy’s current state of affairs. Contemporary history, that is, lies at the core of his artistic engagement. Yet, the baroque aestheticism of The Great Beauty reworks current tensions in an ambiguous fashion. This chapter employs journalistic sources and textual analysis of the film to inquire into what kind of cultural memory of contemporary Italy emerges from the scene. It uses Sorrentino’s neo-baroque aesthetic register and filmic philosophy of civic engagement as frameworks to explore history in the making. To this end, the essay refers to Patricia Pisters’ recent work in The Neuro-Image: A Deleuzian Film-Philosophy of Digital Screen Culture (2012).

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HM Sociology H Social Sciences > HN Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform J Political Science > JA Political science (General) P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN1993 Motion Pictures
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Neo-baroque cinema Paolo Sorrentino Cultural memory Berlusconismo
Additional Information:	JOMEC Journal no. 8 is a special issue, entitled "Italian Cultural Studies" and edited by Floriana Bernardi.
Publisher:	Cardiff University Press
ISSN:	2049-2340
Related URLs:	Publisher
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	30 March 2016
Date of Acceptance:	2015
Last Modified:	03 May 2023 22:04
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/83418

Actions (repository staff only)

Edit Item