Hello everyone - Bob here, back for another birthday review for Al.
This time, Al's given me 8½ (Otto e mezzo), a film by Federico Fellini.
8½, so named at least partially because the director viewed it as the 8½th film he had directed, is a highly respected film: winner of an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language film, on the British Film Institute's list of the greatest films of all time, marked as a film to be saved by the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage, and listed as a highly important film by no less than the Vatican itself.
So, given that pedigree, do I agree that this is a darn good film?
Yes! Yes, I do.
Let's be clear: 8½ is a deeply weird film, obtuse at times, deliberately unclear at times, and filled with confusion. But it's also very, very good.
So: in keeping with my normal method when I review films I actually think people should probably see, I'm going to try to avoid heavy spoilers (though I would say that the plot of this film is not highly detailed in any case and the focus of why it is a good film has less to do with plot than with mood, tone, feeling, and thematic reflection).
But, if you want to go into it totally blind and just need an opinion on whether you should see it, you can skip the rest of this review and just go with: yes, you should. Just bear in mind it is in (primarily) Italian, so unless you speak that you'll be watching with subtitles.
Also, to that end - if you need a place to watch it, it's on Tubi: https://tubitv.com/movies/100050134/8-1-2
Now, to actually do a review of this thing.
8½ is fundamentally a film about making a film, and what happens when that gets difficult - when someone starts questioning their vision, their abilities, their very film concept.
It's also a film about life - how one comes to terms with who and what they are, and with who and what the people around them are and are to them. It's about how we work through ideas, both in creative arts and in our own self-concepts.
The film centers on Guido Anselmi (Marcello Mastroianni), a film director planning a sci-fi epic. Guido is, however, stuck. Extremely stuck. Completely unable to make a movie stuck. Which is a problem, because the process of making the movie is continuing despite that stuck-ness.
Basically, this is a film about writer's block and how incredibly much it sucks. Try as he might, Guido's not only not managing to write for his film, he's unable to make even the slightest decisions about it - unable to decide on actors or actresses, unable to tell any existing actors or actresses the slightest details about their roles, unable to explain details of the production to the crew.
Meanwhile, Guido's marriage is faltering, in no small part due to him having an affair, and in no small part as well due to him being distant and unable to truly connect with his wife. He's struggling to find an idea, struggling to find love, struggling to connect with anyone or anything, in fact, on anything more than a surface level.
He's a man who feels he should believe in his idea and pursue it but doesn't know what that idea is. He has passion, it just doesn't have anywhere to go. He fears whether what he has thought of as a temporary pause might in fact be not only the end of his filmmaking career, but a revelation that he had no talent to begin with.
Along the way, he interacts with various people in his life - a friend with a much younger fiancé (said fiancé is deeply, wonderfully weird in an intense way), the members of his film and production crew, the woman he's having an affair with, his wife, his wife's friends, the memory of his father, his mother, Catholic priests, even flashbacks to his life as a boy in Catholic school and his encounter with a woman on a beach.
Through it all, he also has visions of his ideal woman, Claudia, who he continually hopes will join his film despite his uncertainty about what that film is going to be and whether he can even make it.
One of the interesting things with 8½ is that it's not always easy to say what actually happens in the film, and what is in Guido's head. Reality and vision blend together for him, and in many scenes intrude upon each other, sometimes clearly, sometimes less so.
The film's goal is less to tell you the story of Guido's troubles, and more to show you Guido's mental state - his deep confusion and disorder. To that end, dialogue and scenes can sometimes become deeply strange as it becomes deliberately unclear whether what a character is saying is actually what a character is saying, or what Guido perceives them as saying.
Some events clearly happen, while others are clearly Guido just picturing or daydreaming about what might occur.
Some events exist in a kind of dreamlike middle between those two, where something like them could be occurring but probably not exactly as shown.
Still other scenes blend into each other rather than having a solid break - often, there will be a point where something incongruous happens towards the end of a scene which turns out to lead into the next that's taking place at a different place and time entirely (especially when that next scene is going to be one that's more in Guido's headspace than in reality).
It's very effective at showing you the point of view of a man who is trapped in confusion and uncertainty. It's not quite an unreliable narrator film - for the most part, you're getting a real depiction of enough of the story to catch what's actually going on - but the point of view is definitely skewed and warped by Guido's distress and perplexity.
It could make it hard to connect with the film regardless were it not for one thing: the cast is really, really good. Marcello Mastroianni as Guido is excellent, coming off as charming and likeable despite his many, many flaws and his lack of ability to connect. The film is part comedy and in large part that works because Mastroianni is very good at quick banter, excellent expressions, and some very nice instances of physical comedy that hits just the right notes without going over the top. He plays Guido as an exhausted man who is overcome by his own ambition and his own mistakes, and is just trying to muddle through, unable to figure out a way to move forward but also unable to figure out a way to stop.
Everyone in the film is great, in fact. Anouk Aimée as Guido's wife Luisa puts on a powerful, complex performance as a woman trying to give her husband another chance, as well as the versions of Luisa that exist purely within Guido's head. Sandra Milo as Carla, Guido's lover, is lively, vibrant, and often bizarre, simultaneously shallow and not at all shallow, and a person with a strange sort of view on relationships as she constantly speaks of how much she loves her husband to the person she is cheating having an affair with. Barbara Steele is an absolute scene stealer as Gloria, the aforementioned intense fiancé of Guido's friend Mario (Mario Pisu) - she plays the role as off-kilter, erratic, and often just weirdly off in fascinating ways. Claudia Cardinale plays Claudia, the woman Guido wishes to cast in his film, and plays both Guido's repeated visions of Claudia and what is at least most likely the real Claudia late film. All these performances, and others (some production crew members play fictional versions of themselves and are among the best and most affecting performances in the film in scenes where they confront Guido about their inability to help him make his film when he can't tell them what to do), are engrossing and easy to connect with despite the film itself being intentionally disjointed, distant, and focused on themes of disconnection, confusion, and distress.
I do feel the film has its flaws. Most notably, it sets up some interesting subplots that don't really go anywhere, most notably Mario and Gloria, who take up a lot of screen time and are interesting and fun to watch but don't really have a plot so much as just...be there as kind of a reflection of Guido's own marital situation and struggles with relationships.
They serve well in their role in the film but they are also interesting enough that I kind of wanted to see more of what happens with them, and the film sets up a question of whether Gloria truly loves Mario or is just after his money and then never really progresses with that in meaningful fashion. (Mario's interesting take at one point: she's probably after my money, but there's lots of younger rich guys around she could've picked instead, but she chose me, and I'm choosing to find meaning in that.)
There's also some extended sequences with an actress who is desperate to find out what her role is, and while obviously that's there to show the effects that Guido is having on everyone making his film by being unable to explain it, the actress herself was an interesting character who it would've been neat to see develop some more beyond just being a symbol of a problem.
But again, telling the story is less the point than showing the mental state, so it's understandable that the film doesn't really focus on telling its subplots. Guido is the focus, and other characters matter mostly in how they relate to his life situation, work situation, and mental state.
We are allowed to have glimpses of these people as they relate to Guido, not of the parts of their lives that have nothing to do with him. So, I recognize that this is an intentional effect - even so, there were characters I simply would have loved to connect with more. It just isn't that kind of film.
I also feel the film simultaneously nails its ending, goes too direct with its ending, and goes too vague with its ending, which I recognize is a statement that maybe...shouldn't be possible?
Hopefully without spoiling too much, the ending forces a confrontation between Guido's inability to decide and direct and the needs of the film, pushes him to his breaking point, reaches a false ending via Guido's misperceptions, and resolves in a pleasant way. As part of that, though, a character makes a statement about Guido's intent that maybe is a bit too direct for a film that has largely been content to let its audience draw its own conclusions thus far, but the ending also still seems part dream and part reality, making the audience decide what is actually happening. I would say it comes off as satisfying but not entirely clear. It gives an answer to the questions of the film - it doesn't just leave you saying, "huh?" - but that answer is simultaneously blunt and vague in different ways. Not so blunt as to be ruinous, however, and not so vague as to be unsatisfying - it all fits with the tone of the film, and there's a sentimentality to it that gives it connection.
And, again...what matters to this film is less what happens and more what is going on in the mind of its main character when things happen, and in that, the ending succeeds beautifully at showing a resolution to the conflict that has tormented Guido throughout.
As a fascinating factoid, incidentally - it's reported that this ending sequence is in fact based on something that happened to the actual director of 8½ while making 8½ itself. Fellini himself had difficulties deciding on the details of 8½, and was forced into a confrontation with his own doubts, fears, and uncertainties in much the same way as it happens in the penultimate scene of 8½ itself.
It was there that he realized that he wished to make a film about that very uncertainty, and the film began to fall into place. You can see that in the film itself quite well - 8½ is, in many ways, a film about making 8½ itself, and at many points references its own production.
I'm going to leave it there, as honestly I think 8½ is better watched without overpreparation. It's better to go in with less information than with more, so you can experience the film rather than looking for things I've mentioned or commented on.
I'll just also mention that I found the use of language in the film utterly fascinating at times - there are a few scenes that are conducted in multiple languages - Italian, English, and I believe French at times - and they work quite smoothly while also nicely adding to the feeling of disorientation the film promotes.
Another interesting factor: even in Italian, the speech looks obviously dubbed at times. From what I understand, that's because it was: it was the practice at the time in Italian cinema to dub the lines in post-production, and Fellini himself liked to often have the actors just say random lines on set during filming and to write the final lines in post-production and have them dubbed in then.
So, often, the actors and actresses don't seem to be saying what it looks like they're saying because they aren't.
Overall - 8½ is interesting, unusual, and well worth a watch. It is a deeply artistic film, but an entertaining one at the same time - the two are, unfortunately, sometimes separate concepts and 8½ proves they do not have to be separate at all.
It is weird, sometimes questioning, filled with its own doubts and with the flaws of its main character, but at the same time, it is just a good watch, and a deeply fascinating treatise on the creative process itself.
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| Technically, there's a Sequel too. |
Happy Birthday, Al, and thanks for an actual good film this year.
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