Today I finally got around to watching Fellini's 8 1/2. Without knowing any objective truths about his filmmaking style, when I watched this I saw not just a finished product, or a neat little package, but about a million decisions. Everything seemed so deliberate, and for me that is extremely impressive, to imagine someone making choice after choice, specification after specification. I think this only hit me at the end, when we see the little parade of clowns playing horns. I thought, Wow, someone said, now there will be about 4 clowns and a small boy marching toward the spaceship, and the mind-reader will come back, and Guido's hat will be slightly squashed and askew. Perhaps I am crazy, but I wonder if David Lynch got any sort of inspiration from his films. From the relatively little I have seen of either of them, there seems to be some sort of sameness that I can't describe in any real way. Perhaps the disjointed nature of both of them, the aesthetic integrity of individual scenes and shots [and the viewer's ability to appreciate their dreamy quality independently from the rest of the film] that transforms when seen in their larger context. Although 8 1/2, and similarly La Dolce Vita, remind me of an abstract quilt in their construction, or a mess of orange peels sewed back together in a new order: there are tons of connections and common threads [in particular by way of music], but often where you don't expect them. They made me wonder at what was real and what wasn't, because the beginning of the film had very clear delineations between dreams and reality, but those two get somewhat fused with memory later on, while the three blur together and fade in and out of one another.
Perhaps it is the philistine in me, but I can't seem to watch it straight in one sitting. Or perhaps it's the constant interruptions. However, every time I return to the screen, the sensation reminds me of simultaneously splashing cold water on my face and drinking a mug of warm milk. If dreamlike can be refreshing. Lastly, I will just add that I love Marcello Mastroianni.
Final note: For some reason I found this funny: While walking the dog, we converged with three other canines on the sidewalk, including one that lives in my building. Her human termed this "a meeting of the minds." Perhaps I only saw humor in this because the particular doggy "mind" I was accompanying pertains to a creature whose favorite snack is pencils. I must say that he seems to have a pretty good memory because every time I have given him water since The Chocolate Icing Incident, he sniffs it suspiciously as if trying to determine whether I have laced it with hydrogen peroxide. He will now only trust me to give him ice cubes.
The food has such a strong hold over these people, as diversion, comfort, a means of celebration, and a medium through which to live extraordinarily, it sort of makes me want to be a chef or just mess around in a kitchen while I also am feeling pretty good about being vegetarian.