Movie Talk -- 8 1/2 (1963)

Perhaps the most iconic film in all of Italian cinema, Federico Fellini's 8 1/2 is the story of film-director Guido (played by Marcelo Mastroiani). It is a self-reflective and self-referential film, as if the film he is planning, while recieving "the cure" at a Roman spa, is the same film we are watching.

Dreams, fantasies, and childhood memories figure highly into the story-line.

The author Daumier, who had been brought in to offer criticism for the script, tells Guido:

"On first reading it's evident that the film lacks a central conflict, or philosophical premise, if you will... making the film a series of gratuitous episodes, perhaps even amusing due to their ambiguous realism. One wonders what the author's point is."

In a later scene, during auditions, we see Daumier strung up by his neck in a noose, executed. But this is only Guido's imagination, his release-valve for dealing with the swarming maelstrom of characters that revolve around him with their needs and desires for attention.

On some level the film does seem like a series of random episodes whose only common denominator is one man.

Late in the movie, we visit the Spaceship, an 80 million dollar prop covered in scaffolding, and as so much of the movie's giant cast ascends into the Spaceship I can't shake the feeling that it is a metaphor, but for what?

Near the base of the Spaceship, Guido engages his wife's best friend in serious conversation. Clutching his forehead, he says:

"I thought my ideas were so clear. I wanted to make an honest film. No lies whatsoever. I thought I had something so simple to say. Something useful to everyone. A film to bury forever all the dead things we carry around inside."

8 1/2 is a movie that is both playfully fun and deeply serious. If you are interested in that sort of thing, it should invite many worthwhile viewings in the years to come.

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