La voz de la luna

This is a sad swan song from the director. In many ways. It is a rambling affair, too wordy and shot as if on sound stage with harsh and uncompromising light. Yet there is something about the (oh so Italian!) characters that come and go we imagine, throughout the overlong running time, that the whole will spark into life. It doesn't but what is so sad is that there are, now and again, moments that jump out as trademark Felliniesque visions. Flimsy white lace costumes revolve in unison, a beauty contest promises to burst forth, a group of unfortunates gather to catch a glimpse of 'pussy' as a neighbour undresses and finally a tethered moon brought to Earth. But overall and despite treasurable seconds this stands as a rather forlorn and unconsummated endeavour. A sad farewell indeed.

An astounding movie that left me behind with a smile on the face. Its ending reminded me of the annoying feeling when having woken up after a beautiful dream.

In fact, the movie has something of a dreamland, where almost everything seems possible and space and time have lost their limitations. In Salvini, plaid by Roberto Benigni, it is presenting a modern fool as its very likeable main protagonist, who on his ways around a small Italian town meets all kind of weird characters and hears voices from the ground of the wells. The movie could also be described as a modern fairy tale that in some parts becomes quite reflective when disclosing some absurdities of modern life. When seeing those it becomes in a way comprehensible that Gonella, the 2nd main protagonist, has developed a certain paranoia and believes in a big world conspiracy.

It is also true that the movie does not have a lot of thrill because it is lacking a real story line. This fact, however, kept alive my curiosity because it remains unclear throughout the movie where the film is heading at and what strange things are next to happen. This concept does not necessarily work out but grandmaster Fellini succeeds one more time in presenting us a stream of lively and fascinating images. Some typical Fellini ingredients like madonna statues and fairgrounds are part of them one more time.

Overall, a film like a poem, that certainly is not everyone's cup of tea.

Not many directors would choose the end of their career to head off in an entirely new direction, but that is very much what Fellini does here. This was his first film based on a novel (Ermanno Cavazzoni's "Il poema dei lunatici") and quite a radical departure in terms of style.

In a move which apparently alienated many of his traditional audience, the film-world is almost entirely the one experienced by the central characters, Ivo Salvini and to a lesser extent Gonnella. This subjectivity of approach was of course used in "8 1/2" but in a less extreme and clearly autobiographical way. Here, Fellini makes the brave decision to keep contextualisation and explanation to a minimum, leaving the unwary viewer flailing about in search of a foothold. As Ivo's state of mind drifts between lucidity and hallucination, we seldom know what is 'real' and what is imagined, even down to the words spoken by other characters.

"Felliniesque" themes such as the love/fear of women, religious superstition and motifs like madonna statues and mountains of pasta are revisited from this rather skewed perspective, but the film overall has a dislocated feel which is far away from the likes of Roma or Amacord.

Interestingly, Benigni is asked to act here, rather than doing his usual schtick, and does well as a Chaplinesque figure who occasionally reminds one of Guilietta Masina.

This is certainly not what you might call classic Fellini (he confessed to a crisis of confidence writing it) but there is much to enjoy and to wonder at in this last work. The man himself regarded it as the "orphan" of his films and hoped it would come to be better regarded.

Devotees of Terry Gilliam will note the original of the waltz scene lifted for the following year's "Fisher King".

Probably the only time in cinema where Michael Jackson ("The Way You Make Me Feel" specifically and an inspired dancr sequence) gets a transition into the Blue Danube waltz, and rhsn back again so that's certainly something!

Plotless, rambling, and has more than a few moments where Fellini and his crew place actors and light and setting and music just so to make cinematic poetry: memories as stanzas broken up by the little bits where story appears to be taking place. It sounds contradictory, but what keeps it from being among the filmmaker's best is what is still very interesting about it: Benigni is s man who (after a little time to surmise) is out from a mental hospital and is wandering from town to town, looking for a woman that he adores from his past and interacts with other characters who have their own histories and mysteries and whatnot... And that's it, that's the movie - and all the while, to the director's credit, he gets a real performance out of his star and not merely circus shtick (which is what I assumed many years ago when I first heard of this that it would be).

As with many Fellini, it may just be too much to take in in one sitting, but on the other hand Im not sure I... Care that much about this character and his search for this woman who really doesn't want to see him. And yet, there are brilliant scenes and flashes of greatness through out, wild bits like the one man who gets married and when his wife has sex with him it becomes like being on an actual train that rocks and rolls and creates panedemonium and smoke, or the Blue Danube dance and everyone at the dance breaking out in applause, or that shot where all of those figures with big black garbage cans walk in formation into town. And other times, just as impressively, Fellini slows his usual madman roll snd lets Delli Colli keep the camera more still (or occasionally, something I don't remember from him before, handheld).

At its most enlightening and satisfying, it's a melancholy but entertaining journey through memory and not even desire so much as longing, like tbe ending with Benigni looking up at the moon. It's also about twenty minutes too long (that long sequence in the town square where, uh, suddenly there's a big screen up showing people crying and begging to a fake moon - it really dragged to nothing satisfying), and I wish there was a little more time to understand what the Prefect character was all about as a lost soul. But, even with its flaws, it's still a lovely experience because it's Fellini finding ways to rediscover his passions and interests in exploring memory, regret and the desire to want to fly in the sky, figuratively and literally.

It is a pity that Fellini's last film is not better known as it represents something of a return to form after a series of disappointments. .Fellini's visual imagination is still intact but some of the wonderful precision of imagery is no longer present. Perhaps by the end of his career too many of his old collaborators had died or retired. The best part is the first half hour seen entirely from the perspective of the insane central characters. Their obsession with the moon provides the alibi for many evocative night shots, (I've often thought that one thing that distinguishes great film makers is how they film the night), as well as the spectacular climactic sequence when they imagine that they have trapped the moon. Elsewhere there is typical Fellini fun with the crowning of 'Miss Flower' complete with an outsize King and Queen of the Gnocci and a final shower of flower on all the contestants. 'La voce della Luna' shares much of 'Ginger and Fred's' distaste for the contemporary world summed up in a sequence in which a disco rave is interrupted by a Strauss waltz. This is far more poetic and unexpected than anything in the predictable 'Ginger and Fred'. Those worried by the narrative incoherence of Fellini can bury their boring heads in a screen writing manual. Perhaps the current international popularity of Roberto Benigni, little known outside Italy when the fim was made may yet allow this flawed but haunting film to gain the audience it deserves.