8 1/2 is the single most unlikely masterwork in the history of cinema, an endlessly inventive chronicle of a director suffering a creative block. Federico Fellini's most autobiographical work? Absolutely. A self-indulgent one? Perhaps. At times hard going? Well, you can't deny that. Utterly brilliant?
Yep.
Marital breakdowns, monstrous sci-fi sets, looming deadlines, and the obsessions of the man who is both his creator and his internal self, Fellini, loom over Guido (Marcello Mastroianni), a director who doesn't know what he's going to do when he has to begin his next project, a science fiction epic tentatively entitled 8 1/2 (at least, such is implied, though the title is never explicitly explained). His decision is a surprise and the film's final few scenes are what turn it into a masterwork, any overwhelming film that combines whimsy with tragedy and leaves the final denouement undecided upon, hanging in the air.
When the whole enterprise finally caves in on itself at the end, the film finally feels light-hearted and free. Guido is devoid of pressure, and as he leads his crew in a defiantly joyous dance, his inner conscious runs rampant across the scene. Few films that are so difficult, so laced with disaster and peril, can inspire such orgiastic happiness. But Fellini busts all the rules, and the final shots of a line of clowns stead-fastedly marching out of view are as wonderful as any in cinema. If Stanley Kubrick hadn't been able to go through with making 2001, we can only hope he'd have made a self-examination as keen and engaging as this one. 2001 and 8 1/2 would make a good double feature in fact -- two transcendent statements by two great filmmakers, one about the death of imagination and the other its rebirth.
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