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Dec 28, 2018oPod rated this title 2.5 out of 5 stars
Torturous to sit through, because of the stream of consciousness throughout the film and my lack of sympathy for the protagonist, but compelling to reflect on and psychoanalyze, and if in good company to debate. I don't like the main character, an Italian avant-garde movie director, possibly a representation of Fellini himself. I found him rather repugnant, as it seemed as if he was reliving his boyhood perversions to justify his cheating on his wife, as if it is merely wholesome human or boyish nature and therefore justified adultery. Yet, I respect how revealing the film is as it dives into and lets loose what appears to be the raw psyche. From daydreams, to reality, to memories, to reality, repeated over and over again a constant cycle of revealing thoughts and situations. Perhaps, it is so truthful and that is why it is so disagreeable. It doesn't try to hide his ugly flaws like a person whose true thoughts and impulses so exposed would normally want to. A film so whimsical, yet so real. He craves the approval of mother and the church, yet they seem to reject him, as he rejects those that seek him as a director, companion, a husband in a cycle of seeking and rejection amongst everyone. A mysterious spaceship or rocket often mentioned, but not shown, is it a metaphor for our hopes and ideals, or perhaps our true honest selves? A huge structure of scaffolding to nowhere, a metaphor for the things in life that society builds and climbs to prop-up nonexistent morality and mores, or the castles to the sky that we imagine as kids, much like the nonexistent rocket? In the end his representative of boyhood is a pied piper dressed in pure innocent white leads a band of clown musicians as everyone is swept away in dance and music forgetting their rightful resentment towards him. To his wife (and others) he says this is me as I am, imperfect and flawed, love me or leave me. I say leave him. I'm lecturing at a machismo of a different era and culture, but if he wants an open relationship or multiple relationships, fine, but he shouldn't shrug and justify stringing his wife along while he does so. In the sense that the film grapples with justifying his philandering, it's pure rubbish. In the sense that it lays out the main character's psyche like a freshly opened can of worms or an open book, worts and all it's genius and annoying. The film turns in on itself with lines and scenes about the mayhem and futility of the film making process as if to openly criticize itself and that gives me some relief or hope that Fellini isn't fooling himself into believing his own delusions. A director needs the creative spirits and vantage point of his youth, but that also seems to be the source of his perversions, infidelity, and his mommy and church issues/complex.