“Travel is useful, it exercises the imagination. All the rest is disappointment and fatigue. Our journey is entirely imaginary. That is its strength. It goes from life to death. Peoples, animals, cities, things, all are imagined. It’s all just a fictitious narrative. Littre says so and he’s never wrong. And besides, in the first place, anyone can do as much. You just have to close your eyes. It’s on the other side of life.”
- Celine, Journey to the End of Night
This quote opens the film The Great Beauty, one of my favorite films and works of art of all time.
I just spoke with my friend Levi for his podcast Movies For Humans about The Great Beauty, why I love it, and the notion that great art is transcendental in that it makes us feel like it’s OK to die, that our brief, intense ride on this planet is everything it needs to be.