Roma

Fellini's ROMA imposingly alternates between two paralleled narratives in Rome, his salad days during the WWII and the beginning of 1970s, when he is an eminent filmmaker making a new film about the city, erratically charts its local customs and folk culture to pay homage to an ancient and great city. Structurally, the film doesn't stick to a linear one, instead it disguises with a pseudo-documentary style, in fact, most of the scenes were re-constructed in Cinecittà, however, Fellini stuns audience again with his majestic undertaking which significantly blurs the line between fiction and non-fiction.

The film is not just an ode to the city, more prominently, it is the clashes between past and present that reverberate strongly today. His young self (played by Falcon), a doe-eyed townie arrives in Rome for college, enjoys a boisterous dinner in the street trattoria with the entire neighbourhood, watches a shoddy variety show with crude spectators which would be interrupted by an air raid, flirts with the brothel for the first time; when time leaps forward to the 1970s, the flower-child generation is consuming with alienation and torpidity, a poetic episode of the underground metro construction team encounters an undiscovered catacomb, where fresh air breaches into the isolated space and ruins all its frescoes in a jiffy. A superlative conceit encapsulates the dilemma between modern civilisation and ancient heritage.

There is no absence of Fellini-esque extravaganza, the brothels during wartime are quintessentially embellished with crazed peculiarity and vulgarity for its zeitgeist and national spirit, where sex can be simply traded as commodity without any emotional investment. The most striking one, is the flamboyant fashion-show of church accouterments organised by Princess Domitilla (De Doses) for Cardinal Ottaviani (Giovannoli), consummated in an overblown resurrection of the deceased Pope, it is sacrilege in its most diverting form, only Fellini can shape it with such grand appeal and laugh about it.

Two notable celebrity cameos, Gore Vidal, expresses his love of the city from an expatriate slant, and more poignant one is from Anna Magnani, her final screen presence - Ciao, buonanotte! - a sounding farewell for this fiery cinema icon. The epilogue, riding with a band of motorists, visiting landmarks in the night, Fellini's ROMA breezily captures this city's breath of life, sentimental to its distinguished history, meanwhile vivacious even farcical in celebrating its ever-progressing motions, a charming knockout!

Opinions may vary regarding the work of this artist.

One thing is certain: the man had a genius for making any person, place or thing a "Fellini subject": no matter where his camera pointed, what emerged on celluloid was a "Fellini image."

In "Roma" the shot could be a routine traffic jam; with Fellini not an ordinary one. Along the standard highway appears darkly hooded figures--one holding a silhouetted parasol--while a bonfire casually smolders, emitting clouds of black smoke.

It's no longer just a normal freeway but a Felliniesque creation mounted on the surreal palette of a genuine stylist.

Contemplate the quality of his characteristically rapid-paced dialogue, and you'll discover it's less communicative discourse and more self-indulgent chatter.

All the Fellini trademarks are there: big breasted women, clownlike characters, rude Rabelaisian remarks, all to brassy street band accompaniments tooted on worn, cheap instruments.

In some ways "Roma" picks up where "Satyricon" leaves off, minus main characters. It's all an extremely personal vision--and not a little bit weird, rather like temporarily inhabiting the domain of a slightly warped mentality.

Recalling my own visit to the Eternal City, I don't recall experiencing anything like this purgatorian collage. Then again, I suppose what we see is pretty much the result of who we are.

Made just a couple of years after Antonioni filmed his "Zabriskie Point" in Los Angeles, Fellini never "did the foreign thing," opting to remain working on his home terrain.

For Fellini fans and others with an interest in film history, "Roma" occupies a valid place for observation, notation and appreciation.

Some people would complain that this movie has no plot, but does life have a plot? No, of course not! And so this movies goes, from scene to scene, through memories, collages, documentary footage, hallucinations, with only one continuous character but hundreds of faces, bits of conversation, music, all flowing around just like life when you are very drunk and everything in life makes sense, no matter how absurd.

This movie contains some stunning scenes: the "ecclesiastical fashion show"; the Roman traffic jam in the rain; the deli-style whorehouse; the family style meal; the discovery and destruction of Roman ruins during the construction of the subway system. You can walk in at any moment on this movie and it doesn't matter, you don't have to follow it to enjoy it. Perhaps this is true of all Fellini movies, I'm not sure -- certainly it's true of another favorite of mine, Satyricon.

Fellini's films are a collection of unforgettable images, rather like reading through a photo magazine in a foreign language - you don't need to know the language to understand the pictures. The subtitles can be turned off and you can still follow one stunning vignette after another. Best of all, this film can be watched over and over because you will see something new or interpret it a different way each time.

Rome is seen as a carnival and the people are the freaks, carneys and revellers. Rome has been a great city for over 2,000 years and was once THE city - the center of the world. One cannot imagine New York in 1,800 years time, and certainly not Washington. The film shows the evolution of that great city into a noisy, overcrowded, modern-day nightmare of chaotic traffic, circling around the ancient ruins. Life goes on. We all turn to dust, but others come to take our place.

The most unforgettable image for me was the ecclesiastical fashion show as gaudy and vulgar as anything Ken Russell could dream up. My biggest problem was with the subtitles. Somehow I doubt that the viewers of Fellini's film choose to use vulgar American slang.

A very personal, even autobiographical, always loving portrayal of the city wildly mixes documentary and fictional elements in a seemingly chaotic order, but thoroughly entertaining and amusing.