Why he went back to her after getting in trouble and such. I expected a typical form of childish payback, but it was such a calm sweet moment. Fitting it into the surrounding conversation, it could signify a moment when his faith fell away to nothing, but it still is odd to me.
::I give into sin because you have to make this life livable...
Because I practice what I preach::
it still is odd to me
The Saraghina is the wellspring of sexual energy, the font of interpersonal connection, the antithesis of Guido's repressive Catholic upbringing. Who WOULDN'T want to return to her???
Religion is like a rocking chair -- a lot of work to get nowhere.
fair point.
To be honest, I'm a literalist when it comes to media. Movies, music, lyrics, etc. I tend to see the story rather than symbolism and the like. It does make for some interesting results with music, but I fully admit it can somewhat inhibit me with movies like this.
::in the room with no doors, a faceless boy playing with makeup...
I love him from this mirror...::
I'm a literalist when it comes to media.
IMO, Fellini is pretty literal himself, and the Saraghina episode is a good case in point. She's big, she's uninhibited, she's generously equal opportunity (I mean, they're kids, for Bob's sake, with only a pitiful handful of coins to spare!), and she's having a great time despite that she's...well, not the world's greatest beauty. And when Guido returns to her, there she sits in the sun and the breeze, looking out on the vast mother ocean, humming her tune and happy as a lark. She's everything joyful a person could want. Who wouldn't be drawn to her?
The thing you need to remember about Fellini is that he's a sensualist. All through his career, his detractors groused about how "empty" his films are. By this, they mean he's never all philosophical, dark, and convoluted like Bergman or Antonioni or Kurosawa or Tarkovsky, etc. Fellini is all about the experience, the tactile, hot, close tug of existence, warts and all. The style may seem difficult to fathom...all those strange images. But if you decode them to their basics, you'll see he's really just delighting in the tactile pleasures of his subject matter.
"Serious" film experts often find this annoying. I find it delicious!
BTW, an easy (if somewhat facile) way of decoding 8 1/2 is to watch Rob Marshall's rather uneven "remake," called Nine (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0875034/?ref_=nv_sr_6). It's ostensibly a film version of the 80s musical based on Fellini's film, and it's a very mixed bag of successful and woefully misguided sequences. But it does present most of the movie's basic issues and ideas in a far more linear, less "surreal" format. If you will, it's sort of the Cliff Notes for 8 1/2. And the Saraghina sequence, the "Be Italian" song, is IMO the best part of the film. Fergie also makes a more physically appetizing Saraghina. Though I still love Eddra Gale's wildly over-the-top performance in the original.
Religion is like a rocking chair -- a lot of work to get nowhere.