I understand what you want the film to say. You want to show the confusion that man has inside himself. Just be sure that what interests you, interests everybody. Remember, the audience has to understand the film.

I first saw Fellini's 8 1/2 in college, at a time when I thought it was very important to demonstrate how cool I was by calling it Otto e Mezzo. You know how it is when you're young and an English major with a bunch of boring bookish friends who look to the folks in RTVF (radio/television/film) for entertainment on a Friday or Saturday night. Left to my own devices, I might very unimaginatively have drunk myself into a stupor and supposed that I was capable of captivating a young lady's attention just long enough to irritate her.

So I was usually grateful when my RTVF buddies invited me over to watch whatever movies their film professors had been raving about during the week. That's how I first got my exposure to some really interesting older movies (such as The Manchurian Candidate and The Bad Seed) and some movies that I thought of at the time as "self-indulgent crap." (That phrase is taken from Bull Durham, the kind of movie that I would have watched if left to my own devices, which demonstrates that my own devices aren't all bad.)

When I first saw it, 8 1/2 struck me as a bit tedious. I can't help it if I'm a great believer in the importance of dialogue. It didn't matter to me how often my film buddies insisted that "film is, first and foremost, a visual medium"; I tend to be more impressed by a clever remark than by the image of a man on a beach lassoing an airborne Marcello Maistroanni by the ankle.

In 8 1/2, Fellini asks the viewer to observe a director who is so entranced with his own id that he is powerless to create anything. Or perhaps he is empowered to create pure art, art that respects no boundaries and simply happens the way I suppose we all imagine inspiration happens when it is genuine inspiration.

Mastroianni does a genuinely remarkable job of watching his own desires as they are projected onto the world and yet remaining incredibly withdrawn as he sees the consequences of those desires unfold. But I have an aesthetic bone to pick with films like this, a quibble that Fellini manages to address quite literally in the course of the film:

Why should I care?

I understand that the ultimate justification for any artwork that we are likely to categorize as "self-indulgent" is that it serves to put us in touch with our own alienated selves. For instance, I suppose that Eraserhead succeeds to the extent that it rescues us with a faint sense of hope after exposing us to the sound of the wind whistling through our own empty souls in a world that is filled with sham relationships and meaningless genetic connections.

So when I see the way Mastroianni's character moves from fantasy to memory to genuine interaction with those around him, I should be able to take solace in the fact that I too have a difficult time reconciling what is in my mind and my memory with what is going on around me. I suppose there are times when it is frighteningly difficult for all of us to understand how the world in which we live can be so vastly inferior to the worlds that we are capable of imagining.

Frankly, though, I find I don't need self-indulgent artworks to validate my sense of alienation. I'm unashamed of my sense of alienation, even proud of it. I cherish it and couldn't care less whether Federico Fellini endorses it or not.

And that is precisely why I should never be allowed to make a film. That is the key difference between art that is self-indulgent and art that is self-indulgent crap. Fellini's vision is not one of an alienated consciousness that is proud of itself for being alienated, but of a consciousness that is simply and automatically intrigued by itself. I didn't understand this until I saw the film a second time, so I will urge you to be patient.

Mastroianni's character is something that I am not: He is likable. Why should I care about the way his memories give way to flights of fancy? Because they do so in such charming and unassertive ways. Sure, he is somewhat callous towards others. He lies to his wife and to his actresses and even to a stagehand who is promised a part in a film if he will do a certain dance. And when he is caught in a lie, he becomes contemptuously dismissive of those who were silly enough to trust him.

But there doesn't appear to be anything sadistic or mean-spirited in his lying. He believes that true happiness can only exist in a world where nobody's feelings get hurt. And since his feelings are hurt any time a beautiful woman refuses to sleep with him, he carefully constructs a fantasy world in which every woman who strikes his fancy is incorporated into his harem.

But then a sense of reality tries to disrupt his fantasy. He cannot help thinking, even in the midst of his fantasy, about how the women in his harem feel. What about the ones who are too old to be attractive? How are they handled? And do their feelings get hurt when they are told they are no longer attractive?

Of course they do. So there is an explosion of violence after which the women themselves agree that the rules of the harem are right and just, that Mastroianni's character is too good to them. The fantasy within the fantasy is not only to get what we want, but to imagine that those around us will take profound satisfaction in helping us to get what we want. But since the things that we want (young, beautiful women) will not always correspond with the things that they want (the desire of older women to feel appreciated), the only solution is to fantasize.

Or to lie.

Mastroianni lies to everyone. He relies on lies to stall his producer and to keep his stars waiting around for a script that a sour-faced writer is incapable of salvaging because of the wrongheaded nature of the project. That sour-faced writer, incidentally, is part of what makes the film work. By voicing the criticisms that a casual viewer is likely to make of the film, he gives the film a chance to defend itself.

The climax of the film occurs when Mastroianni can no longer stall by lying. He is at a press conference for a film that he knows he cannot direct because "there is no film." Everyone in the audience is clamoring for information about the non-existent film, and his response is to duck underneath a table and attempt to escape. We lie to escape from the world while knowing that we can always run to escape from our lies. Is such behavior responsible?

No.

But does it make for true happiness?

It's as good as anything, I guess.


Recommended:
Yes

Video Occasion: Good for Groups