MIT Lecture Series Committee

March 4, 2014

unrated
142 minutes

view trailer

format: Blu-ray

The Great Beauty (La grande bellezza) (2013)

FREE admission for MIT students ($4 general admission). Co-hosted by the MISTI MIT-Italy Program and the PIB association.

2013 Academy Award Nominations: Foreign Language Film (WIN!)

Journalist Jep Gambardella (the dazzling Toni Servillo, Il divo and Gomorrah) has charmed and seduced his way through the lavish nightlife of Rome for decades. Since the legendary success of his one and only novel, he has been a permanent fixture in the city's literary and social circles, but when his sixty-fifth birthday coincides with a shock from the past, Jep finds himself unexpectedly taking stock of his life, turning his cutting wit on himself and his contemporaries, and looking past the extravagant nightclubs, parties, and cafés to find Rome in all its glory: a timeless landscape of absurd, exquisite beauty. Winner of the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film, and the BAFTA Film Award for Best Film not in the English Language. [www.rottentomatoes.com]

Cut from similarly sexy and satirical cloth as Federico Fellini's masterworks a half-century ago, Paolo Sorrentino's movie glides like reverie, probing the emptiness that can result from living a full life.
      -- Steve Persall, Tampa Bay Times. Read this review.