Possible Meaning of Ending (Spoilers)

Several threads here address the ending and what it might mean. I thought a new thread here might be a good idea, setting out the following as an offered attempt at insight into one way to look at the ending.

There is an extra that comes with the Criterion dvd release of La Dolce Vita I think helps in understanding the end. It compares two scenes, comparing the gaze we see from the young woman Paola right before we see Rubini leave the water's edge on the beach to an earlier scene involving Steiner and his wife. (See essay by kogonada.)

The essay focuses on these two scenes in particular by comparing the way the eyes of two characters seem to subtly change what they are focusing on. The essay notes the influence of the famous scene in Ingmar Bergman's Summer with Monika from 1953, when Harriet Andersson breaks the fourth wall and stares right into the camera, and how that scene affected Godard and Truffaut, who both used a similar effect in Breathless and The 400 Blows, respectively. The essay assumes (with good reason) that Fellini is aware of these previous treatments.

On the last scene the essay notes that Paola stares into the camera right before the film cuts to the shot of Rubini leaving. The shot of Paola just before the cut to Rubini leaving begins with her eyes not centered on the camera, but off to one side, and significantly the angle is to the camera's right, which in turn would be where Rubini "is". In other words her eyes are looking at Rubini. As the shot progresses Paula’s eyes move, from her perspective, from the left (the camera’s right) to end up centered on the camera.

The earlier scene is the one where Rubini enters Steiner’s apartment. It opens with Steiner's wife standing in front of double doors, inside, the camera taking the angle from what is an interior hallway in their apartment building. She is also looking right into the camera, slightly turns and opens the doors. Inside a party is going on. The camera is rolled inside the doors, and we see Steiner in the middle, staring, as his wife was, right into the camera. He is smiling. He stands and seems to be approaching the camera, and then very subtly turns his focus to the camera's left. Rubini walks into the camera's vision from the left, and we see that Steiner is looking at Rubini as the two men greet each other.

The essayist argues that the earlier scene in Steiner's apartment is literally a reverse of the shot of Paola at the end. Steiner's focus, as was his wife's, is into the camera, but then his focus moves to be on Rubini. Paola's focus begins on Rubini, and then turns slowly into the camera. The essayist argues that these shots are intended to show that when the subjects are staring into the camera, it is Rubini's eyes they are looking into. I think this is very persuasive.

But what was Fellini up to in these scenes, using these shots?

Returning to the parallels with Bergman, Godard and Truffaut, the essayist notes that Fellini's shots differ in the use of movement, both away from the camera (Steiner's apartment) and into it (Paola on the beach). Bergman’s shot of Ms. Andersson by comparison pans in but does not otherwise move. So, what does this difference suggest?

Before attempting an answer, a brief word about the character of Paola is in order. She is in terms of screen time a very small character, yet it is her image that is the penultimate one, with Rubini seen leaving the beach the very last. Fellini obviously chose not only to put her image there, but can be seen to have put also a great deal of thought into how her focus tracked.

Regarding the character of Steiner, here Paola’s comparator, La Dolce Vita I think clearly posits Rubini’s inability to understand his friend Steiner’s essentially impenetrable inner life and how it led to his murders/suicide to be central to the film’s thematic elements. Just as we are not in effect made privy to Steiner's inner thoughts, the way Paola is shot, her relative lack of "importance" indicated by the absence of any attention paid to her own inner thoughts, I think make clear that the focus on her is meant to convey us, in Rubini's place, to look at her as Rubini does and would - similar to Steiner being in effect beyond Rubini's understanding, Paola is not understood except on the surface, and what Rubini thinks that appearance means.

The film and what we see does not impart to us knowledge that we as viewers have that a character in the film (here Rubini) does not have. In short we are meant to understand that the Paola we see, staring right at "us", smiling, and also still standing there as the film cuts away from her, is what Rubini not only sees but understands about her. And no more than that. (In other words the explication of Paola’s role in the film and her character does not include any knowledge other than the limited understanding of her that Rubini has, which is essentially limited to his gazing at her surface appearance, along with the brief words she says earlier in the film, and what they say about her, which is very limited.) She is not a fully formed character, but instead is a symbol.

Turning back to the overall circumstances of how the film ends it is open as to what happens afterward. But it includes that Rubini sees Paola as representing some innocent ideal that, while he then walks away from the water, is still there as he does so. And he understands that this ideal will be "there" at a later time (even if, of course, the character of Paola need not literally remain standing where we last see her), if Rubini chooses to "return".

As for the significance of the way the focus moves in these two shots, I am not certain what that is. Bergman's shot of Monika by comparison more clearly seemed to suggest a conscious connection between Monika and the viewer, with the viewer understanding something about her inner life. I don’t think the same can be said about Fellini’s use of Paola here. Perhaps the movement Fellini uses instead imparts that reference of connection to Rubini's perspective. But it also has the simultaneous effect I think of putting the viewer in Rubini's perspective.

More generally, if you look at other Fellini films, I think Fellini is inclined to have more open endings than otherwise, or that is common. For example see La Notte di Cabiria, with its fascinating and in my opinion clearly open ending(which I will not describe here to avoid posting spoilers). I would also add 8&1/2 has an open ending.

So we can see from other Fellini films that he is comfortable with that kind of ending.

But on the specifics in LDV, I interpret Paola's last vision of smiling at Rubini, who yes had not yet walked away, but who had also not given Paola any indication he was about to walk toward her, either, as being generous while open ended.

While the film ends and we do not know what happens afterward, it certainly follows that it is not necessary to conclude that Rubini will wallow in a sort of desiccated alienation. While the camera is Rubini as the shot of Paola ends, the cinematic effect, along with other elements that reinforce this experience, is to encourage our identification with Rubini. So to some extent the beauty of this film and its ending is that while we can imagine whether he will go this way or that, we do so by theorizing about that which makes most sense to us.

An interesting comparitor film is Antonioni's La Notte, which was made two years later with Marcello Mastroianni again in the lead. It is another consciously Existential film that leaves us with an open ending. Of course films other than those focused on the existential have open endings, but I think consciously Existentialist filmmakers had an affinity for that kind of statement. Having identified what leads to our sense of alienation, it is still up to us to decide how to go forward.

To be clear I think Rubini is in a state of alienation as the film ends. One can't help but see Fellini's description of his day to day life through the film that precedes the ending as an indictment. And also we understand that Rubini understands this, too. It is not merely because of Steiner's suicide and the wondering why that it causes. His acceptance of Maddalena's offer of marriage is I think not something Rubini would have said if he were satisfied with his life up until then. (He was looking to change his life, not anywhere near entirely because he was drawn to Maddalena for her if you will intrinsic virtues as that she would help him leave behind the life he had been living.)

And I also think it likely Rubini will wallow in his sense loss, as a kind of self-pity, for some period of time.

Still I tend to a more optimistic take on the ending, and what, perhaps only eventually, after perhaps even a lengthy period of time, will happen to Rubini. My optimism is merely that I do think in his last sight of Paola he also sees "the smile" as a sort of comfort that it is out there, and at some point if he is up to the challenge, which it is, he may pursue it.

The challenge of life when understood as being towards death I think can be simplified as presenting three alternative responses or approaches. We can either try and avoid recognizing this as life's essential truth by being distracted by what Heidegger called everydayness. Or we can give into self-pity and a sense of emptiness, at best trying to dull the sense of it by various means. Or we can seek a way forward that is based on caring for others, which of course is Heidegger's suggested approach.

Whether Rubini ultimately pursues that third option is not at all a certainty. But I don't think the film requires us to see Rubini as left with the second option for the rest of his life (with the first option essentially foreclosed to him, as I do think the film requires us to see).

Bergman of course is another subject, and as an Existentialist filmmaker most would tend to place the majority of his films as having a pessimistic bent, although ftr I think there often is in at least some of his films some hope if you look for it. But as for Fellini, while I do not see him as a rose colored glasses wearing optimist, on the whole I do think his intentions are more positive. The perfect example is the ending to La Notte di Cabiria I referred to above.

In conclusion, while the ending is open, subject to interpretation, the way Fellini shot that final scene, specifically with the camera transitioning to put us the viewers in Rubini’s eyes, gazing at the symbolic image of Paola, with meaning and recognition of her and her symbolic, metaphorical importance to Rubini in his search for meaning, tends to support the view that there is reason more for optimism than pessimism for Rubini’s future. The final shot does show him retreating from Paola with the other party goers, and this leads us to conclude Rubini will continue for some time to experience the alienation he has found he cannot avoid with them and in his life so far. But he knows what Paola is and stands for remains “out there”, meaning is available to him. His search for meaning will not literally return him to that beach and to her, but instead what she stands for.