I've been wanting to write a review of "The Beautiful City" because I love the movie so much that a lot of it still haunts my mind years later. Rome is a beautiful and decadent city. The protagonist, Jep, has reached his twilight years. He has witnessed the beauty and depravity of this city. He hangs out with various social elites, but he is always aware of the boredom of life and the inevitable death. He saw through the hypocrisy and vulgarity of the upper class. He realizes that he doesn't have time to do things he doesn't like. The only person he's interested in is someone who, being the daughter of a big drug lord, wants to be a stripper. She has an obsession. He meets a magician who can make animals disappear, and he asks the magician if he can make himself disappear. He met another hundred-year-old nun who only ate the roots of plants. In the end, she said that she only ate the root because the root was the most important thing, so she chose to kowtow and walk up the steps of the Vatican Church step by step. It is a belief that cannot be destroyed by the world.
When everything was over, his mind returned to the beach decades ago, where he kissed the girl he loved for the first time when he was young. He was emotional and hopeful back then. He realized that everything was flashy and fleeting, and it had long since settled down in the noise.
The director Sorrentino is a genius and I love his mastery of the picture. Every frame is absolutely beautiful, showing the glamorous indifference and decadence of Rome to the fullest. I also love his grasp of emotions, you can feel the indifference, the restraint, and the buoyant emotion poised to go under it. Aging and emotions are his eternal topics, which can also be seen in "Youth and Exuberance". But his characters show less of a fear of death and more of a numbness to a boring life. Jep, who has gained both fame and fortune, has witnessed the decadence of Rome, and he is desperate and indifferent to life. He misses the good feelings of his youth. I've always been drawn to these kinds of films, and even though I'm not yet thirty, I often feel my indifference to life and my sadness and helplessness about the inevitable vulgarity of the future. I always feel that young people should use more affection, live a little more enthusiastically, and have hope. In this way, these experiences are a little bit of light in the cloudy days to come.
In fact, life is a trick. It ended up being empty. We all forgot the script we got earlier and performed to the fullest on stage. In fact, realizing the emptiness of life does not mean giving up clinging to everything. Some paranoia is worth remembering, because these are the experiences that shape our unique selves. When we truly accept the trick, we also accept its good and bad, banal and absurd. Just like the audience under the stage, even knowing that the magician was fake, they still happily appreciated these miracles, and laughed at the magician's momentary omission.
Finally, I add my favorite epilogue that never tires: "Usually the end of things is death. But first there will be life, hidden in this and that. In fact, it has already settled in the noise. Silence is emotion, and so is love. Fear, beautiful light, wild and impermanent, those hard, miserable and painful human nature are buried under the embarrassment of being born as a human being, in fact, it is nothing but glitz, I don't care about glitz, so this is the beginning of the novel, and in the end it is just a A trick, yes, just a trick."
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