The Great Beauty portrays Italy more faithfully than its new prime minister

The film shines a spotlight on Italy in a way Matteo Renzi won't – which is why the Italian media has panned it

Arianna Letizia and Santiago Zabala

theguardian.com, Feb. 27

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/27/the-great-beauty-italy-prime-minister-matteo-renzi

Paolo Sorrentino's latest film, The Great Beauty, and Matteo Renzi's appointment as the prime minister of Italy, are probably the most significant recent events in Italian culture and politics.

Even though Renzi belongs to the same political establishment that has been running the country for decades, most Italian newspapers praise him as the man capable of breaking the deadlock in which the nation has found itself since Silvio Berlusconi took power more than 20 years ago. The reaction to Sorrentino's movie has been very different. Although it has won a Golden Globe, a European Film Award, and a Bafta for best foreign language film – and could be honoured with an Oscar this weekend – it has been heavily criticised throughout the Italian media. Alessandra Levantesi Kezich of La Stampa says the characters "are nothing more than grotesque fragments of a puzzle incapable of composing a unitary design", while Paolo Mereghetti of Il Corriere della Sera thinks "in the end Sorrentino has really not understood much of the beauty (and ugliness) of Rome". But why?

The Great Beauty discloses not only the beauty of Rome but also its greatness – that is, its aesthetic dimension. This is probably why the movie begins with the death of a Japanese tourist as he admires a panoramic view of the whole of Rome from the Janiculum, a hill west of the river Tiber. The city's beauty seems to imply and demand something he cannot resist. However, the movie is not about this tourist, but about those who resist – that is, who have given something up in exchange for this great beauty. This is why the main character, a 65-year-old Neapolitan called Jep Gambardella, masterfully played by the award-winning actor Toni Servillo, is constantly looking for new ways to fulfil his life, as if the best part has already gone. He is not alone. His group of bourgeois friends, aged over 60, (some of whom are inspired by real writers, intellectuals and artists), resist by attending trashy parties; it's a generation incapable of growing up. As it turns out, the younger generation is almost entirely absent. So, if Italy is no country for young men, it is due to this older generation whose resistance is so well disclosed by Sorrentino's characters.

Even though last Saturday Renzi became the youngest prime minister in the history of Italy, he is no stranger to politics. His fame began in 2011 when he declared that a complete change was necessary not only in Italian politics, but also within his party. This launched an internal dispute that he finally won a few weeks ago, forcing prime minister Enrico Letta, a member of his own party, to resign. Afterwards he immediately made a deal with Berlusconi and promised to enact a new reform every month. Even Niccolò Machiavelli would be surprised to see how well Renzi manoeuvred himself into the highest seat of parliament using those same political models he says he intends to overcome.

While Ezio Mauro, editor-in-chief of the progressive La Repubblica newspaper, says the new golden boy of Italian politics will be successful because he is "post-ideological" – that is, beyond institutional manoeuvres – Allesandro Sallusti, in charge of the conservative Il Giornale newspaper, praised the deal because "it drags away with force the leftist anti-Berlusconi militant ideology which is blind and stupid". As it turns out, this ideology is one of the few things that united most progressive Italians.

If journalists have been so supportive of Renzi's appointment and critical of Sorrentino's masterpiece, it is probably because the latter portrays Italy more faithfully than the former. And because the new prime minister recalls what Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa wrote in his novel The Leopard: "If we want things to stay as they are, they will have to change.