I totally agree with Tifone74, he's very spot on.
The thing with Italians about this movie is very connected to how Sorrentino itself is perceived.
Before The Great Beauty, Sorrentino was often highly regarded by critics and public. he was seen as some sort of an anomaly in Italian Cinema, his movies were weird, nicely written and with great visuals. But Sorrentino was perceived as something of a Cult filmmaker. Something that people everywhere "could" like, but with an acquired taste. Il Divo changed things a bit; it showed that The Consequences Of Love wasn't a one-time trick; worldwide audiences liked it, so it kinda influenced our perception of him as well.
Garrone had a similar case; his Gomorra was similarly successful. But the difference with Sorrentino is that he didn't take too much advantage of that. He later made "Reality", which is a very nice movie, but didn't make such an impact. And he followed with the gorgeous Tale of Tales; but the Fantasy genre is hard to sell, I think. He never really made the same splash of Sorrentino, which is a huge shame, as his movies are always small works of art.
But, back to Paolo; what happened after Il Divo? This Must Be The Place.
A star vehicle with an enormous love of America and its legacies. It failed, it proved too hermetic, too weird. I remember not liking it very much, and reviews were good, but not great.
Still, it made a difference. While not hugely successful in America, it still allowed Sorrentino to throw his name around. And in the U.K., his older movies were already being released on DVD. French critics hated him, yet, I couldn't find a single DVD store in Paris that didn't have Il Divo or This Must Be The Place.
So, when The Great Beauty was announced, it followed the Sean Penn movie; which was an incredibly expensive production for an Italian company and proved that Sorrentino was willing to create mastodontic productions just to tell his weird stories.
And when the great beauty was released, it felt like a Sorrentino movie just 100 times larger and taking place in our country. It felt like a piece of Hollywood had followed him.
If you take the audience perception of Sorrentino and the final product, you'll get why it was so successful on its first weeks of showing. Sorrentino's style is peculiar in that it shows you a hundred elements and tells you almost nothing behind them. He makes you wonder, it puts comedy in it to make light of the tonal inconsistency and writes some very eloquent dialogues. He adds his personal feelings into it and some visceral truth he feels right. And All the money that goes into it, makes everything look fantastic.
The Great Beauty starred Toni Servillo, which is generally regarded as a seal of quality, and it came at a time where the audience was slowly disconnecting with the Berlusconi reality; the world of TV, scantily clad women and eternal luxury. It was just perfectly timed.
"Average" moviegoers with "average" film sensibilities, felt this movie was either "too complex" or "deeply truthful about our country". Film lovers would go in to see "Sorrentino's new weird movie" and "average" people would go in because of what they heard or read in newspapers; that it was a movie about how decadent our country had become.
Following the Oscar winning, things started to settle into place. People were rewatching the movie and noticing that it wasn't so great as they remembered it. Some, rewatched it and talked about it all the time, newspapers especially because of the Oscar win. "Average" people simply forgot about it or just regarded it as "That movie about Italy that won an Oscar". Others, those who disliked it in the first place, couldn't understand how Sorrentino could have won an Oscar. Amateur filmmakers everywhere started to feel their insicurities taking life: "The only director to be truly recognised in our country is Paolo Sorrentino. The guy who makes movies about everything and nothing."
First hand experience with my coworkers, all filmmakers;
"Have you seen the new Sorrentino movie?"
"Ugh, not a chance."
Not to say ALL filmmakers hate him. A few friends of mine still think good of him, but others talk about him like it's "not cool" to think highly of Paolo Sorrentino. Yet, they still take notes from his shots.
But it's still hard for me to not find a prejudice against him. The idea is that, if you like a Sorrentino's film, just be sure to explain why. Everybody loves the visuals, but his movies are felt to lack any truth or real substance; which is an unfair opinion. He's even being impersonated by a famous TV comedian, Maurizio Crozza, playing him as a director who makes random movies with random images and just makes sure to have them last hours and hours. It's fun but a little too harsh, in my opinion.
It all has to do with these different factors. I even heard somebody claiming the movie itself was unfair to our country.
In retrospect the Great Beauty just came perfectly timed and was largely accessible to make the Average public think or be amazed about our country. The Oscar falloff further pushed The Great Beauty worldwide.
So, I hope this answers your question. The final answer is "Who knows who really liked it? And did those who liked it understood it completely for what it was or did they just make a far deeply enriched movie in their heads?"
I myself liked the Great Beauty when it was released. I saw it three times. Then, I went back to look at his other movies and started seeing his patterns, his obsessions, his little tricks; it's a gorgeous trick of a movie.
I loved "Youth", which suffered the fallback of the great beauty and the creation of the prejudice. And couldn't go past the fifth episode of the young pope.
Too much Sorrentino for my tastes.
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