It might have passed by all those who watched or even just heard about the film, however, that there was a significant inclusion of Estonian music in the film. In its rawest, most humble scenes, Arvo Pärt’s “My Heart is in the Highlands” (set to a beautiful Robert Burns poem) and Pérotin’s “Beata viscera” (“Blessed Womb”) as performed by Estonian Music Week veterans Vox Clamantis are heard. La Grande Bellezza is a film full of mysteries, colliding sensations that are eventually better understood through the instant impressions they make rather than piecing it together intellectually. But here’s how we get to those scenes with Pärt and Vox Clamantis.
Jep Gambardella is a journalist and high-level Roman socialite who rests, uncomfortably albeit, on the success of a novel he wrote in his 20s. Now turning sixty-five years old, continuing the raucous life of partying he’s always pursued—replete with rooftop DJ parties, dancers, a mariachi band, booze, and shocking contemporary art—is something he’s made to question. He drifts through the streets of Rome by night (and day if he’s not catching up on sleep from the night before) in a daze. Time has worn down the grandeur of being at the top and knowing lots of famous people. He sees them, just like himself, for the flawed human beings they really are. He sees the shame and sadness hidden behind his friends’ masquerades.
