I would like to share this novel. Read – and point your finger at an interesting place on the page to someone who is sitting next to you, select quotes and hang them on your wall in a social network. Fortunately, the novel will have a large audience: Paolo Sorrentino wrote a book and made a film based on it. My warning is probably too late, but if you haven’t seen the movie yet, read on first: it’s a great co-creation experience.
Two friends in their eighties, the English composer Fred Ballinger and the American film director Mick Boyle, daughter Freda, son Mick, a silent German couple, a little violinist, a Hollywood star and other guests of a Swiss resort lead a wonderful life against the backdrop of the Alps. Parents and children express to each other everything that has accumulated and reconcile. The couple part, mourn their marriage, and take comfort in a new relationship. Old friends commit betrayals – or, conversely, remain faithful.
The line with old friends is the most interesting. It contains forgotten concepts like male friendship and solidarity and a delicate balance between the full truth and its non-hurting part. Mick is sick with all diseases and buys a mountain of medicines in a pharmacy, Fred is healthy as a bull, but he buys for the company; Mick asks in the morning, “Did you urinate today?” – Fred honestly lies: “Yes. Two drops”; Fred asks if Mick slept with the woman they were both in love with 60 years ago, and Mick replies, “The real tragedy is that I don’t remember if I slept with Gilda Black or not.”
Read more:
- “Youth” by Paolo Sorrentino
For me, the meaning of the novel is that old age is not a tragedy. No more than youth. Rage, selfishness, callousness, lust, madness of fame, throwing spirit, betrayal – this is all youth. And if we are lucky, if we understand everything correctly and correct our mistakes, then old age will be the alpine sun, the sky, cows with bells in the meadow. And if not, then no. You can correct some mistakes right now – and no longer be afraid of either old age or death.
Paolo Sorrentino, Italian director and screenwriter of seven films, one of which, The Great Beauty (2013), received four Oscars, Golden Globe and BAFTA awards at once.
Translation from Italian by Anna Yampolskaya.
Corpus, 224 p., 2015.