Having gone to a top art school, for architecture, natch, but I took a bunch of art courses, the END RESULT of the art piece is what matters, and if an artist has stumbled upon the masterpiece, through some combination of talent, risk, serendipity, luck, stupidity, ALL SO MUCH THE BETTER.
It is like the Japanese concept that no object ought to ever be created that is PERFECT, because a perfect object insults the deities -- thus an object ought to be made a bit IMPERFECT on purpose -- never mind that the resulting object is technically by definition even more "perfect" but that's old school thinking for you!
In this way, you can see Fellini, in 8 1/2 has done a bit of the opposite, attempting to create a perfect object, to please his fans, he has stumbled upon an even MORE perfect creation, FALLEN UP as it were, which only makes the resulting creation all that much greater.
He has wrapped up all the variables in such an insanely great package, that even the FLAWS seem accounted for, as if he knew they were there and he wanted them to be there. Indeed, most of the best movies seem to have this quality of super accountability. This quality is also what makes people so crazy for really bad films that are so bad they are "good".
Plus, it is more fun to tear a movie like this apart, analyze it from all sides, wonder what was purposeful and what was serendipitous, than to analyze any of the mediocre pieces of garbage regularly created all but mindlessly by the Hollywood machine.
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w-vds
12 years ago
I agree.
I just wanted to point out that this piece probably wasn't all well thought out/planned but rather 'stumbled upon' as you put it. (wasn't meant as a rant or anything; I love Fellini's films; I just wanted to share the insight)
Fellini is a very expressionist writer/director. I highly respect him for that. His characters are a reflection of himself and how he experiences the world. His films aren't made to please us in any way like most hollywood productions. They are very true and honest. That takes a lot of courage.
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kenny-164
11 years ago
Honesty and courage. I like that. I am hardly a universal fan of Fellini's at this point. I don't really like any of his early films until you get to Cabiria. But that one is a masterpiece. La Dolce Vita is another masterpiece, as is this one. Juliette of the Spirits is also excellent. But Satyricon has become unwatchable for me, and Amarcord and Roma are films I used to enjoy that I am almost afraid to watch again, since I fear they will not hold up well (as Satyricon has not).
Funny but I knew Fellini's work before Antonioni's, and compared him more to DeSica and other Italian directors. And of course a contemporary like Bergman can seem at the opposite end of the spectrum from Fellini, although that is not really accurate. Think of the very Felliniesque scenes in Hour of the Wolf when we see the puppet show at the castle, or even the menagerie of characters in the later dreamlike sequences.
But now I think more of comparing Fellini to Antonioni, and while both Italian, Antonioni's work, while perhaps even more avant garde than Fellini, strikes me as the more disciplined and coherent filmmaker.
Well, there is room for an undisciplined work that can even be seen as embracing its borderline incoherence. 8 1/2 is a film Antonioni could not or would not make, and it is brilliant. And honesty I think is a big part of what makes this film so succesful. Fellini avoided giving this film's viewers simple answers, because in his honesty he did not have simple answers to the questions raised. It is an approach that is no doubt off putting, but the honesty involved makes it work.
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