Achteinhalb

After 8 or 9 unsuccessful attempts in the past, at long last I somehow managed to sit through & stay awake for the entirety of this unfathomable bore but at what personal cost. A towering feat of cinematic boredom that arguably has no equals, this avant-garde surrealist comedy-drama turned out to be exactly what I presumed it would be: too far up its own ass.

Co-written & directed by Federico Fellini, the story of 8½ concerns a famous filmmaker who no longer remembers the film he wanted to make. The idea came from Fellini's own creative block during production and through all the pain that he underwent, he decided to make a story that captures the similar frustrations so that the audience can suffer just as much as he did.

On a serious note though, the film does acquaint the viewers to an extent with the struggles of creating art and the personal sacrifices that the process demands. It's an exhibition of what a director's job actually looks like and how regardless of his professional & personal issues, he's expected to deliver. It is aimless & convoluted like the film within the film coz it is the film within the film.

Overall, 8½ is a tedious, overlong & self-indulgent exercise that left me indifferent to everything it had in store and while I see the brilliance of its metafictional construction, the drama remains an insufferable eyesore filled with characters as bland & uninteresting as they can get. And the dream sequences are even worse. In short, this film is nothing more than a mere tick mark on a checklist for me.

Fellini's films is one of the main reasons I came to love movies in the first place. I first saw 8 1/2 several years ago. I remember it quite clearly: I went to see it with a small group of fellow students at a friend's house. It was at the beginning of a now already long-since destroyed relationship. It was a cold day in early January. As the film started, a girl who was there, who happened to be a make-up artist and hairdresser by profession, remarked on the odd juxtaposition in the opening scenes of hair-styles and dresses from different eras, the 30's and the 60's. Surely, this was a strange anachrony?

My friend calmly remarked: "Time doesn't exist."

Heck, I won't pretend to know just what he meant by that, perhaps it wasn't as profound as it sounded. In any case, after that, no one spoke. For the next couple of hours, I certainly lost track of place and time, as I was hypnotized, mesmerized and amazed by the images on the screen. Since then, I've always kept a copy of it within reach (even though I am one of those people who can usually never hang on to my possessions for any length of time), and it has lost none of its power to continually amaze me. I've seen it more times than I can count, and yet, it must always be seen again. It's a movie about which everything seems to have been said, and yet, everything still remains to be said. Thanks to the wonders of DVDs and MPEG encoding, I can keep it one mouse-click away whenever I'm working on my computer. I must admit that by now, its already from the outset discontinuous and jumbled content has been spread all over the place for me. Unlike Woody Allen, I'm not anal. I've never had a compulsion to have to watch movies straight from beginning to end, without interruptions. Of course, that's how I watched 8 1/2 the first few times, but now it seems that I'm always chopping it up, skipping at will between my favorite sections, always moving around it and rearranging it in new and unexpected ways. I hope Fellini, in his Heaven, forgives me for it, because it seems to me that I'm in a way just continuing what he began. 8 1/2, even in its purest state, does of course blow the traditional temporal narrative, with a defined beginning, middle and end and a causal relationship between its parts, to complete smithereens, and in the jumbled landscape that is left behind, nothing can ever be as it was before, as what we are left with is a completely new world, of new possibilities and new kinds of beauty. It's a story of dream-logic, held together by different kinds of connections that transcend temporal sequence and causal relationships. It's a film that never begins, and still has always been there.

It's a movie about the most glorious success that can only be brought around through complete failure. It's about how we can only find ourselves when we let go of ourselves - and discover that the only place we can fall is into ourselves, our true selves. It's the ultimate self-referential masterpiece, and the ultimate piece of self-reference, as it is, of course, about nothing except itself.

It really is, in my opinion, the best movie in the world, and by now I can't even imagine a world without it. That's really all I want to say.

I know this film is loved and admired by countless filmmakers and fans. I know that the film is very artistic and wonderfully well made. And I understand that all serious lovers of film SHOULD see this film. But, despite this being a "must-see" film, I didn't particularly enjoy it--but I do respect what Fellini was trying to do. For the first time, Fellini was able to capture on film the psyche and inner turmoil of a director and although the film stars Marcello Mastroianni, the film is in many, many ways autobiographical. His inner struggles with traditional morality and god, sexuality and loyalty, all the sycophants trying to get his attention and the critic as well as his own childhood (including, of course his mother AND a representation of early sexual awakening in the form of a hideous but very sexual lady who looked a lot like Divine!) all come together in a series of somewhat disconnected images. All these factors that together work together to make the director's psyche are interesting, but very surreal--like the entire film is a dream or something that is the result of drugs. It is interesting at times, but also very tiring and difficult to watch at times and occasionally a bit dull. That's because it's a very choppy movie and only a child who is very hyperactive could easily stick with the ever-changing plot. As for me, what I liked best was the opening dream sequence--it was very amusing and brilliant.

This type of self-analysis and parody was often copied in such films as STARDUST MEMORIES (to me, a blatant attempt by Woody Allen to steal or re-created 8 1/2) or DAY FOR NIGHT--though Truffaut's vision is much, much more conventional and lacks the surrealism and weirdness of Fellini. Many prefer Fellini's mad style, but as for me, while it is not as original or wildly innovative, DAY FOR NIGHT was a more enjoyable film.

Overall, while not a fun or completely comprehensible film, it's a must for anyone who considers themselves a serious fan of film.

Frederico Fellini's masterwork 8 ½ is difficult to approach largely because of its reputation. Many critics also state that the film is so complex that it requires multiple viewings to understand, and this is likely to intimidate many viewers. But in truth, and in spite of its surrealistic flourishes, 8 ½ is more straight-forward than its reputation might lead you to believe.

The storyline itself is very simple. A famous director is preparing a new film, but finds himself suffering from creative block: he is obsessed by, loves, and feels unending frustration with both art and women, and his attention and ambition flies in so many different directions that he is suddenly incapable of focusing on one possibility lest he negate all others. With deadlines approaching the cast and crew descend upon him demanding information about the film--information that the director does not have because he finds himself incapable of making an artistic choice.

What makes the film interesting is the way in which Fellini ultimately transforms the film as a whole into a commentary on the nature of creativity, art, mid-life crisis, and the battle of the sexes. Throughout the film, the director dreams dreams, has fantasies, and recalls his childhood--and this internal life is presented on the screen with the same sense of reality as reality itself. The staging of the various shots is unique; one is seldom aware that the characters have slipped into a dream, fantasy, or memory until one is well into the scene, and as the film progresses the lines between external life and internal thought become increasingly blurred, with Fellini giving as much (if not more) importance to fantasy as to fact.

The performances and the cinematography are key to the film's success. Even when the film becomes surrealistic, fantastic, the actors perform very realistically and the cinematography presents the scene in keeping with what we understand to be the reality of the characters lives and relationships. At the same time, however, the film has a remarkably poetic quality, a visual fluidity and beauty that transforms even the most ordinary events into something slightly tinged by a dream-like quality. Marcello Mastroianni offers a his greatest performance here, a delicate mixture of desperation and ennui, and he is exceptionally well supported by a cast that includes Claudia Cardinale, Anouk Aimee, and a host of other notables.

I would encourage people not to be intimidated by the film's reputation, for its content can be quickly grasped. When critics state the film requires repeated viewing what they actually seem to mean is that the film holds up extremely well to repeated viewing; each time it is seen, one finds more and more to enjoy and to contemplate. Even so, I would be amiss if I did not point out that people who prefer a cinema of tidy plot lines and who dislike ambiguity or the necessity of interpreting content will probably dislike 8 ½ a great deal. For all others: strongly, strongly recommended.

Gary F. Taylor, aka GFT, Amazon Reviewer

It's been said before: Marcello Mastroianni plays Guido Anselmi, a fictitious, 43-year-old film director with a personal crisis that stunts his creative flow and his inability to get on with his new film after the enormous success of his previous one. The character is iconically brought to life by the immortal Mastroianni with artificially greyed hair and is universally identified as an alter ego of Fellini himself.

The first time I saw 8½ I was in my teens and hated it. I then rewatched it only a few years later, in my early 20s, and something miraculous happened. It was probably a pivotal moment in my film-viewing experience: it suddenly gave me new parametres by which to judge movies and even art in general. I suddenly learnt this new language, so much more beautiful and sophisticated than anything I had heard before. What was most amazing was that after the first negative experience, I had somehow tapped into this language's secret, and it wasn't in the least bit hermetic or difficult, though more complex and sophisticated than other languages I already knew. Many of the movies I'd considered greats became amateurish or dwarfish in comparison.

To me, this was no longer simply a movie, but Art in a more universal sense of the word, Art that just IS and has nothing to strive for or prove. Which is why I find it so nonsensical and contradictory to call something like 8½ "pretentious" - to me, pretentious is when an insecure auteur is trying consciously and hard to be profound, difficult, original, ground-breaking, and you can see their intent clearly, and detect the effort behind the artifice. Nothing of any of this is anywhere to be perceived in 8½, which makes creating masterpieces look easy.

I admit that 8½ is not an easy movie, nor one for everyone. Visually, fewer movies are as iconic, memorable, original, poetic, funny, inventive, allegorical, exhilarating.

The scenes I love are too many to mention, but here are just a few: The steam bath scene when in an odd procession/ritual, the patients are being led into what must be a Turkish bath. All the steam surrounding them, the men wearing sheets that look like shrouds or togas, all looking like mock-ancient Roman dignitaries... Then, through a loud-speaker Mastroianni-Anselmi is told the dried-up, turkey-like Cardinal, will now condescend to meeting him. Before Guido rushes off to meet the Cardinal, all his friends and colleagues beg him to put in a good word for them. This is such a gleeful stab at Italy's grovelling, nepotistic culture of ingratiating oneself to the powers-that-be by paying them lip-service even for the most petty personal advantages. Then Guido stands before the embodiment of Catholic paternalism and his obsequious minions. And everything is at its most pompous and lifeless - this dusty, mummified institution is less in touch with the humanity it's supposed to comfort and advise than it is possible to believe.

I also love the character of Guido's mistress, Carla, played by Sandra Milo at her gaudiest and most voluptuous. Though initially it's difficult to understand what Guido would have seen in her, eventually it become more apparent. Meeting his wife Luisa, you see how well the two women's ways of being complement one another. See for example how she reacts in a simple, good-humoured, self-deprecating way when in the café scene, Guido's elegant, neurotic wife played by Anouk Aimée at her most androgynously attractive - mockingly compliments Carla's tacky outfit for its "elegance". In such instances one gets a sense that though Fellini is parodying his subjects, he also has a fundamental love and human compassion for them.

The prostitute La Saraghina is probably one of the most memorable female characters put to film ever. She is probably somewhere in her 50s and rougher than sandpaper, overweight yet strangely fit and voluptuous, with lots of scary, wild dark hair, overdone raccoon eye make-up caked onto her aggressive, striking, sardonic face as she sits and dances on the lonely beach in Rimini next to her war bunker-home. Guido is fascinated by what is "young and yet ancient", eternal, meaning what is muse-like, archetypically, like the divinely beautiful Claudia character, perfectly embodied by Claudia Cardinale (the ultimate director's muse rather than a real woman or mistress). La Saraghina may not be a young woman like Claudia, she may not represent spontaneity and fresh, uncluttered artistic inspiration like she does, but she is also a muse of sorts - the muse of guilt-free pleasure and non-self-conscious, free, unidealised, earthy femininity. All this is La Saraghina - the town's young boys respond to this in her (including Guido as a child) and are bewitched by her and pay to her to see her demonic yet liberating, visceral dance.

I have so much more to say about this movie, for instance about Nino Rota's memorable score, or how the movie's non-linear structure and juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated scenes emulates the rhythm and mood of dreams to perfection. Also, the scenes featuring Guido's parents and their embodiment of the emotional blackmail, that eternal sense of guilt and the stunting of individuality that the paternalistic institution of family at its most traditional represents in Italy. Or of Guido's touching childhood memories, of the wonderful way in which the movie ends, in a merry-go-round of what really matters in life, when all else has been swiped aside and all that remains is the desire to cherish (with all their imperfections) all those who have really mattered most in our lives...