Why did Elsa leave him?
Her husband says that Jep was the only man she ever truly loved... What generated that great connection between them and why did she leave him and marry someone she only thought of as "a good companion"?
This is the question I came here for. What do people think?
sharePerhaps because, like Jep, she felt their first love was perfect, and by nature couldn't last. Their experience was one of the "inconstant flashes of beauty" perceived "beneath the chitter chatter and the noise..."
By leaving Jep, she preserved the perfect love before it would inevitably fade, lost under "the wretched squalor and miserable humanity." Similarly, Jep wrote his beautiful novel, then discontinued writing. The experience of love and artistic accomplishment, forever preserved. But doing this can also lead to paralysis.
I say "perhaps" because I am only feeling my way toward the answer. To end a perfect love affair, and for that particular reason, the girl would have to be quite unique, a very willful romantic.
That is actually pretty good answer.
shareThanks.
One other thing seems significant. She left him on Sept. 8th. End of summer.
It is the age-old story of an idealized May-September romance, cherished forever. It looks like the romance began in the summer, when they were free, when conditions were magical and perfect. (His memory of her is limited to the island in summer.) Now they were returning to the ordinary world, ordinary expectations, ordinary life. No way the romance was going to feel the same again. The sharp change in outward conditions would have added conviction to, if not triggered, the girl's impulse to end the affair.
We seem to agree. By not consummating the physical attraction it could stay intact as an ideal and never wane. But she ruined three lives by her immature plan. Jep was haunted by the unconsumated attraction, she cursed a husband who knew she loved another and she herself was tormented. Was there a hint that she had children? The fiilm showed a debauched class of people spiritually lost.
The music (I'm a composer/pianist by trade) seemed very inspired. The elegaic aspects reminded me of SOLARIS. Too long by 30 minutes but still worth a viewing.
I don't even think that the answer is that important. The important thing is the way how he perceive this experience with Elsa and how he remembers her. At first we have an image of a man that enjoys parties of Roma's elite society, who doesn't care about anything, and doesn't take anything seriously.
But soon we see how detached he is from all of that superficiality, and how broken he is
since his search for "Grande bellezza" failed.
One of the rare things he saw beauty in was her. As it is already mentioned here and summed up in the last monolog - it was one of those moments of beauty lost under the miserable humanity.
His melancholy and thoughts on Elsa, who might as well be only idealized in his mind, shows us how delicate his character is, and his subtle fight with the ugliness/emptiness of the life was the most touching component of this movie, for me.
And, if I may risk by adding, I find this story in to be universal in its essence. We are all searching for that beauty, that big feeling, that might not even exists - or some kind of "meaning" to use the cliche word. We hope that, if it is not here now, it will come later...or even more later. And then, having a man that is 65 years old, that shows us that this beauty might be present only in flashes in our life, just to disappear instantly...whoa! I was blown.