Ain’t nothin’ more indulgent than a film about a filmmaker’s struggle to make a film, but what director does indulgence better than Federico Fellini? He’s an artist whose vision for a movie has more in common with a carnival than a tight narrative. He loves faces and bodies more than plot. He loves chaos more than order. His work is so personal and unique that he’s incapable of shooting a scene that doesn’t bear his instantly recognizable signature from start to finish.
Here, he makes his cinematic self-portrait (starring Marcello Mastroianni as Fellini’s alter ego) and it’s a confounding mess. It often seems barely organized. It’s also funny, beautiful, sexy and haunting. Its story of a famous director who can’t figure out what his next film should be while his personal life falls apart and he deals with second-guessing producers and screenwriters, as well as a needy press and public, is Fellini’s own story of the time that followed his smash success with La Dolce Vita. He tells it through dream sequences, flashbacks and fantasies that occur so often that it sometimes takes a few minutes for the audience to realize what they’re seeing.
Mastroianni’s director is the only real character, which is intentional. All of the other players here aren’t so much personalities as they are invaders of his physical and psychic space. Most come bearing criticism, demands, distraction or annoying questions. With a few pointed exceptions, Fellini rarely introduces a character politely here. Instead, they often pop up jarringly out of nowhere, sometimes in immediate close-up. It’s as if they don’t exist until Mastroianni sees them.
In a way, they don’t. Much of this film—maybe all of it—takes place in the director’s head, beneath his constantly cool demeanor (his eyes often hidden by sunglasses). It’s a space where his neuroses, fears and difficult relationships with women and religion come alive, tangle themselves with each other and form puzzles. What makes it engrossing is that Fellini is much more sensual than he is cerebral. His camera is more apt to chase after a beautiful woman than after heavy symbolism. And when he does give us symbolism, it’s typically easy to read—we’re talkin’ Dream Interpretation 101 here—and laid out with a painter’s eye for startling imagery and perspective.
It’s messy, but Fellini is comfortable with a mess—and so must be his audience. 8 1/2 is the greatest film about film ever made because it’s about that and much more.