The humanist man is a construct that divides human and non-human.
It is the conviction that humans exist ‘either outside of nature or
above it’ (Gilebbi, 2019 p. 357).
Gilebbi suggests that The Great Beauty (2013) is an allegory of
the crisis of the Humanist Man by implying that Jep is searching for a
posthumanist subjectivity (2019, p. 356).
Jep is searching for his place in the world that surrounds him. He is
distanced from the ecosphere, this is shown by placing Jep up high above the
city at the party, at his house, etc. And when he walks through the city he
watches as others such as the nun who is collecting the oranges, appear to
become one with her environment, as she almost vanishes into the tree.
About 1 hour and 35 minutes into the film Jep asks
Arturo to ‘make me vanish too’ and Arturo replies, ‘it’s just a trick’. The
giraffe scene harks back to the zoetrope, an optical toy of the late 19th
century, and a precursor to film and film cameras. The zoetrope gave the viewer
the illusion of movement. Just as
Arturo’s giraffe was simply an illusion, a trick. Pick and Narraway discuss posthumanist film
studies and the different ways in which the environment is acknowledged in film
(2013, p. 10), one of those ways is Zoe-tropes: Envisioning the Nonhuman,
acknowledging the ‘complexities of depicting animal life on screen’ including
the anthropomorphism of animals in film (Pick & Narraway 2013, p. 11).
Pick and Narraway state that film studies have tended
to treat non-humans as simply backdrops to the story, as simply expendable raw
material, thereby supporting the theory of culture/nature dualism (2013, p.7).
Gilebbi states that Sorrentino uses animals in his films, such as the illusion
of the giraffe, to imply that human exceptionalism is simply an illusion too
(2019, p. 358). Gilebbi mentions that
Sorrentino’s posthuman subjectivity comes through in his films in situations in
which the humans ‘find themselves entangled with an environment that they
cannot control or even comprehend’ (2019, p. 351). Gilebbi suggests that Jep
removes his hat to show respect when he sees the giraffe towering above
him (2019. P. 357). Perhaps instead Jep is removing his hat because he cannot
comprehend what he is seeing.
At the party on his terrace, Jep calls his guests,
wildlife, and says that this is his life and there is nothing. Gilebbi mentions that
Sorrentino portrays his humans as ‘facing an opaque and unchartered nature culture (2019, p 353). Later in the film during the flamingo scene, Jep
acknowledges to Sister Maria that the reason he has never written another book
is that he was looking for the great beauty and never found it. Sister Maria
replies that ‘roots are important’, a clear message for Jep to reject the
humanist construct and return to nature.
Jep lives a nihilistic, humanist lifestyle. Throughout the film, Sorrentino places Jep into situations to emphasise that he isn’t separate from nature. That he is vulnerable, that life is fragile, and that he isn’t special, and that the humanist belief of dominance over nature is like the giraffe, an illusion.
References:
Gilebbi, Matteo 2019, ‘Posthuman Sorrentino: Youth and
The Great Beauty as ecocinema’, The Journal of Italian cinema and media
studies, v. 7, iss. 3. Pp. 351-362.
Pick, Anat & Narraway Guinevere 2013,
‘Intersecting Ecology and Film’, Screening Nature: Cinema Beyond the Human,
Berghahn Books, New York.
Comments