The Great Beauty Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		5.0
Video		5.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		4.5

The Great Beauty Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Svet Atanasov January 25, 2014

Winner of Best Foreign Language Film Award at the Golden Globe Awards, Paolo Sorrentino's "La grande bellezza" a.k.a. "The Great Beauty" (2013) arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of British distributors Artificial Eye. The supplemental features on the disc include an original theatrical trailer and behind the scenes featurette. In Italian, with imposed English subtitles for the main feature. Region-B "locked".

"But I did not want to just live the high life. I wanted to become its king. I did not just want to go to parties. I wanted to have the power to make them a failure"

There was a time when Jep Gambardella (Toni Servillo, A Quiet Life, The Consequences of Love) was the King of Rome. He was young, ambitious, and always ready to claim what he believed belonged to him. He was alive. People respected him and wanted to be seen with him. He was so popular that if there was a party and he wasn’t there people would tell the host that he had wasted his time organizing it.

But that time was years ago.

Now, on the eve of his 65th birthday, the King can barely stand what he once loved – the noise, the excess, the people who worshiped him. There is also a part of him that can barely stand the jaded cynic he has become. He has been trying to suppress it but has failed miserably, which is why now he spends most of his time thinking about the life he could have had.

Like its King, the Eternal City has also changed. Its beauty has faded. Its many treasures have been locked away. The tourists visiting the city can’t tell, but the King and those who once praised him can see the change. Some have learned to live with it, but many have started leaving because they could no longer recognize the city they once fell in love with.

The lonely King will stay. His life started here and it is only right that it ends here, amidst the ruins and the reconstructed plazas, close to the great beauty and the kitsch that is slowly destroying it. The end is not as he envisioned it, but it is probably the one he deserves. It could be that it is also the end He has chosen for him.

If the great Federico Fellini was still alive, he would have loved to direct La Grande Bellezza a.k.a. The Great Beauty. It is a remarkably elegant, deeply poetic and strikingly original film that takes the viewer on an unforgettable journey to a place one can easily argue only the mind of the great maestro could have imagined.

This bold new film, however, is directed by Paolo Sorrentino, an incredibly gifted young Italian filmmaker who undoubtedly understands how to create magic. This isn’t an exaggeration. The Great Beauty rediscovers the Eternal City in a way that literally forces the viewer to forget about time and believe that its colorful characters are real people.

All of these characters symbolize a philosophy of life that has reshaped the Eternal City – and not into a better place. Amongst them are cynical and disillusioned aristocrats who frequently meet to remind each other that they are still alive, an aging stripper with a secret (Sabrina Ferilli, 3 Women), an ambitious Cardinal who is also an expert in occult secrets (Roberto Herlitzka, Good Morning, Night, a lonely exhibitionist (Isabella Ferrari, Amatemi), a former club owner with a shady past (Massimo De Francovich, Who Killed Pasolini?), freeloaders who need their daily cocaine fix, and a 104-yea-old saint (Giusi Merli) who has traveled to Rome possibly to heal the wounds left by Berlusconi’s government.

The visuals are extraordinary. The beauty and the kitsch are filmed with a sense of elegance that makes the overwhelming majority of the film look like a modern fairy tale. But it is all real. This is contemporary Italy, a declining and polarized economic power where everyone still loves to party.

Note: The Great Beauty was selected to represent Italy in the Foreign Language Film Category at the the 86th Academy Awards.

The Great Beauty Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Presented in its original aspect ratio of 2.35:1, encoded with MPEG-4 AVC and granted a 1080p transfer, Paolo Sorrentino's The Great Beauty arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of British distributors Artificial Eye.

The film looks spectacular in high-definition. Viewers with large screens and in particular those who project their films are guaranteed to be impressed with the tremendous range of lush colors and outstanding image depth. The nighttime footage with Rome's beautiful gardens and the various panoramic shots look simply stunning. The indoor footage also boasts outstanding depth and clarity. At times light is intentionally restricted, but detail and fluidity remain impressive. There are no serious transfer-specific anomalies to report in this review - the encoding and compression are very good. Image stability is also excellent. All in all, this is a wonderful presentation of what is undoubtedly one of the very best European films to be released during the last ten years. (Note: This is a Region-B "locked" Blu-ray release. Therefore, you must have a native Region-B or Region-Free PS3 or SA in order to access its content).

The Great Beauty Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

There are two standard audio tracks on this Blu-ray release: Italian DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and Italian LPCM 2.0. For the record, Artificial Eye have provided imposed English subtitles for the main feature (they cannot be turned off via the remote control). They split the image frame and the black bar below it.

The lossless 5.1 track is simply outstanding. Indeed, the audio has terrific depth and dynamic intensity is as good as I believe it can possibly be. The film's diverse soundtrack certainly benefits the most from the lossless treatment as the large party sequence as well as the choir singing later into the film both leave lasting impressions. The dialog is always exceptionally crisp, stable, and very easy to follow. The English translation is excellent.

The Great Beauty Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailer - original trailer for The Great Beauty. In Italian, with imposed English subtitles. (3 min).

• Backstage - an excellent behind the scenes featurette with plenty of raw footage from the shooting of the The Great Beauty in Rome. Music only. (16 min).

The Great Beauty Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Italian director Paolo Sorrentino's The Great Beauty is the best film I have seen in well over a decade. It is a mesmerizing masterpiece which deserves all the praise it has received at important festivals around the world. Films like this one don't come along often so if it still plays in your local theater, see it on the big screen. You will experience something very, very special. I also urge you to consider adding The Great Beauty to your collections. The film looks magnificent on Blu-ray. VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.