It happens a little too often - on television, in newspapers, on blogs, on the web, on social media - to witness performances (even quite extreme at times) in which commentators (almost never improvised, eh!) hover in a vortex supercazzolist of words and phrases that aspire, according to them, to interpret current events and politics.
«Yes, France is a country that functions very well but it too is now in a phase of depression. He no longer believes in himself and his future" you might hear someone out there say, as a maxim that would like to resolve the complexity of French politics.
But there is worse – and as if there is worse! -. There are those who believe that everything can be resolved with small talk. Very often the thoughts written on current affairs, politics, culture (especially culture!), foreign affairs resemble the futile, vacuous, uninformed speeches of friends and acquaintances who find themselves talking about this and that, or bar chatter.
For example, read these sentences:
... in moments of crisis like the one we are going through, criticism of politics grows and becomes very strong, but of the past one (which the intellectual oligarchies close to power mistake for anti-politics tout court), while instead the demand for a new and different policy. In the form, precisely, of a leadership that is up to the situation. Of someone who knows how to indicate concrete solutions but above all is capable of arousing new inspiration, of instilling hope and courage, of fueling - let's not be afraid of the word - also a higher moral tension: the one that serves to restore a positive image of ourselves themselves that the crisis often destroys.
(E.Galli Della Loggia, Corriere della sera of 17 December 2013)
Perhaps The Great Beauty is not Sorrentino's best film (for this writer it certainly isn't) and there have probably been, in these 15 years, better films in Italy too (the double Il divo and Gomorrah, to stay in the family ). But to grab the Oscar you need, like it or not, a mix that Sorrentino's film totally possesses. The fundamental ingredient for making it in the USA seems to be to stage a sort of deja-vu, to exhume a hint, an aroma of something that Americans know and that they really like to remember.
(Elisa Battistini, Il Fatto Quotidiano of 13 January 2014).
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