Birds in the Roman sky: Shooting for the sublime in La Grande Bellezza

Abstract

The movie La Grande Bellezza stages the most recognizable sights and sounds of the city of Rome, in a referential gesture that brings us back to the past glories of Italian cinema. This is why the movie has been accused of pandering to foreign – mostly American – audiences, an accusation that was in fact encouraged, rather than prevented, by the winning of the 2014 Oscar as best foreign movie. This essay argues, instead, that Paolo Sorrentino anchors his movie in the aesthetics of the sublime as a profoundly ethical category, based in our emotional and affective response to infinity and loss. In the movie, Rome not only serves as a postcard-like, picturesque backdrop for a sublime perception of historical time; the city’s skies open up to inhuman and even saintly figures, and remind us that what is needed in today’s Italy falls nothing short of a profound ethical and political reformation.