A movie director in the middle of his big budget science fiction flick will be going through a horrible case of creative block. His producers will be waiting with money in their hands, the sets will be made, but Guido Anselmi the director of the film doesn't have a clue about what he wants to do. Whatever he has written is being rejected by the critic and he will not be able to come up with new ideas. His personal life and the occasional dreams he gets about his life will be pushing Guido to his limits. This is the basic plot of "8½", this film directed by Federico Fellini is based on his experience in his carrier of film making.
This movie is for anyone who works in the creative line of work. The creative block you get when you are totally prepared to work, but your brain just shuts down on you. Its one of the most terrible feelings, it will make you pull hair off your head and scream at the top of your voice. Well Guido in the film is also going through the same thing, but the scale is a million times bigger. Guido even tries to pull inspirations from his experience from his childhood and tries to write stories with it, but he will be rejected.
The character Guido Anselmi played by Marcello Mastroianni is really well written, he is a very calm and controlled person. But, slowly we'll see him losing control of himself as the things go out of his hand. Adding more to the chaos are his dreams and flashbacks. One of my favorite is the way Fellini imagined the first dream where Guido will be flying high like a kite and a rope will be tied to his leg with other end of the rope held by his own self. Guiodo will be flying high, but he himself will be holding the rope on the ground and will be stopping him from flying higher, and suddenly a wizard casts a spell that pulls Guido towards the ground and he plummets towards the ground. This scene has deep meanings within itself. It indirectly says "We are responsible for both our success and the failures", this scene at the beginning sets a great premise for the movie.
Every dream Guido will be seeing will be an abstract forecast of his future. The dreams are not premonitions, this makes the movie much more interesting to watch. The dream where Guido will be getting showered and powdered by all the women in his life also has a lot of hidden meanings in it. This movie is like a puzzle, the audience are supposed to find meanings behind everything. Fellini is a master in hiding things in plane sight.
The interesting part of the film is that Fellini didn't really give dialogues to his actors. We see actors just moving their lips and all of the dialogues are done in post. Fellini wanted to make this film as a tragic comedy, but this film feels more like a comedy. The tragedy is also there, but the comedy which is interwoven will balance it out. This makes the audience give a lot of emotions, sometimes you will be confused about how to react.
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I highly recommend this film for a film lovers. This is probably the only film out there which deals with an artists internal struggle with his creative work. Towards the end we'll see how his work will take everything from the artist, both physically and emotionally. Thank you for reading this post, for more posts and review follow me. Cheers!