Watching The Great Beauty ...

"This is how it always ends. With death. But first there was life, hidden behind the blah, blah, blah. It's all settled beneath the chitter chatter and the noise, silence and sentiment, emotion and fear. The haggard, inconstant, splashes of beauty. And then the wretched squalor and miserable humanity. All buried under the cover of the embarrassment of being in the world, blah, blah, blah. Beyond there is what lies beyond. And I don't deal with what lies beyond. Therefore ... Let this novel begin. After all ... It's just a trick. Yes, it's just a trick"

Jep Gambardella

I'd wanted to watch The Great Beauty as soon as I read the review in The Guardian -

I'd gazed at the photograph of Jep Gambardella, smoking a cigarette in a dangerous nightclub - 

I was haunted by the words of the critic summing up the film - a sensual overload of richness and sadness and strangeness - 

When I saw the film, it surpassed all of my expectations - 

I was was no longer a former apparatchik in a gentle town - 

I was walking through marble galleries at night, past sumptuous treasures, a Caravaggio, a Guercino, a bust of Augustus - 

I was walking past a convent at dawn, watching the nuns pick oranges - 

I was adored at wild parties, dancing the train - 

A beautiful woman lay naked beside me, under the high ceiling of an austere apartment - 

I remembered my first love, and how she had turned away from me - 

I wept whilst supporting a shining coffin upon my shoulder -

I ravished by melancholy, drinking wine in a baroque palace - 

I knew that I was getting old - I knew that I should only do the things I wanted to do - 

I felt the shame of not using my talents - 

I saw a giraffe vanish amidst some noble ruins - 

I heard music that made my heart ache - 

It was a film I never wanted to end - 

22.30

October 22 2014

The Rex 

Wareham