Watching Paolo Sorrentino's masterpiece "The Great Beauty (La Grande Bellezza)" with my morning coffee. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it.
It's a film set against the breathtaking backdrop of Rome - with striking, picturesque shots of the Eternal City throughout - but it's focus quickly turns inward; on the inherent loneliness of a writer's human condition, even in the midst of his own narcissism, self-loathing and nocturnal discomfort. The various gatherings and bacchanals of the grotesque, self-absorted Roman upper class (his social circle) prove to be a kind of charade. Even the decadence masks loneliness.
The meaning is found in the passion; in being a connoisseur of Art, in the fleeting nature of love, sex and human connection, and in savoring those rare, simple moments where human beings can overcome their fear and crippling self-doubt just long enough to take off their masks.
