A Mirror Floating in Water

8 1/2
Well, this being one of my three favorite films of all time, whenever it's on, I never hesitate for a revisit.

First of all, this is the greatest dedication to film ever made; it is a complete homage to art and life, and how art can save life. The subtitle of this film was The Beautiful Confusion and that is exactly what it is. Throughout the film we feel as if the camera and actors are participating in some sort of surrealistic ballet. This film was so many layers of depth, everything gravitating around it's centeral character, who is without a doubt the Hamlet of cinema, Marcello Materorini in the performance of his career, a director who suffers from writers block and muses upon nostaligic memories of his childhood as the whole world around him waits at his feet for his next film.

At one level, this is a meta-fictional film, with even a self-referencial title to tell so (Fellini had directed seven features and three shorts before this). It is obvious that the director, Guido is Fellini, and that Fellini; after making La Dolce Vita was suffering from writers block, having no idea where to go next, so he decided to make a film about his very own confusion, and crafted it into a beautiful character study of a man who shares every part of us.

It's not just that Guido is searching for inspiration, but he is searching for meaning, for purpose, to his seemingly artifical, confusing and yet orderly life. Nobody understands him obviously; the producer is constantly bugigng him, his intellectual co-writer is always taking philosophical jabs at him, he even sees a priest, who has nothing of use to say but that he can never find salvation outside of the Church. His wife loves him, but is fed up with his confusion and ambivilence as well. He tries to drift off into peaceful moments in which he can muse upon the ideal beauty, his nostaligic past or sexually charged dreams of the subconscious.

There are so many flawlessly directed scenes in this film, all of them handled with such imagination and surrealism, that one is reminded why Fellini is Fellini. Nobody can express the confusion and surreality of both waking and sleeping life than Fellini, not Lynch, not anybody. Fellini handle Guido with sentimentality, but transends any kind of sympathetic/unsympathetic standards, by self-consciously answering any critics and believing enough in himself that Guido represents everyone of us.

(might be some spoilers)
Never has more personal a film been made than 8 1/2, nor has a more joyful, confusing and surreal film ever been made. By the end, Fellini dives into the chaos that is life and gives Guido the most beautiful Hamletian epiphany, and the film ends with a baroque band of circus performers playing the flute, tuba and horn, to the dancing of everyone whom Guido has ever known in the chaos of his life.
10/10