15 Movies From This Decade (So Far) Destined To Become Classics

7. The Great Beauty

A scene early on in Paulo Sorrentino's The Great Beauty sees the ageing writer Jep Gambardella (Tony Servillo) at his own extravagant birthday party - here, surrounded by all the opulence and debauchery it hits home for the first time just how vacuous and empty his life really is. It's impossible to avoid comparisons with the work of Federico Fellini - Jep sits somewhere between the youthful journalist in La Dolce Vita searching for happiness amidst the whores of Rome and the jaded filmmaker of 8 1/2, and as with Fellini's masterpieces Sorrentino is as keen to explore Rome itself as he is the characters who drift through its streets seeking pleasure. The Great Beauty is at the same time an apt and ironic title. It is sumptuous to look at, and yet it asks the viewer to contemplate the ugliness of the socialites it focuses on and the pointlessness of their self-serving intellectualism and pretentiousness. It might not always be quite as clever as it thinks it is but it comes damn close.