★★★★★ 5
How Good is Great?
I purchased this DVD because of its' sustained superior ratings in the Sight and Sound survey every decade of the best films of all time. Obviously, there must be something very great about this movie. There is but but there are some second thoughts that plagued me along the way. First of all, I am always impressed by a film's ability to hold our attention. This is often where the skill of film editing is best appreciated. I confess that I found myself looking for some scenes in "8 1/2" to move along. This is a cerebral movie, not an action movie but there seemed to be a fair amount of redundancy. Secondly, I was surprized by the sound work on this movie. I made a quick glance at a few other reviews but didn't see any similar comments. Thus I don't know if it was just my copy. However, the sound didn't match up with the film very well at all. This gives the movie an odd appearance of being an Italian movie dubbed in Italian. Was I missing something? Finally, the message in this film, for me, was "to your own self be true" which is certainly a valid philosophy; just ask Socrates. However, it was stretched to come across as "accept me for who I am, not whom you want me to be". This message is still a valid philosophy but a bit harder for some of us to accept.
Having said all of that, let me praise the movie; (I DID give it a "5" after all). The acting is terrific; especially Marcello Mastroianni whose air of detachment fit the movie so well. The photography (B&W) was excellent, as well. The story is one of a director who has lost his own direction. As he stumbles aimlessly along supposedly putting together a film, his inteactions with others and his reminiscences give us an insight to his confusion. His world is overwhelming him and he can't figure out where to turn. He is much the victim of himself (which makes the message that much harder to swallow). As his crisis reaches its' own crisis, the movie rights itself with his discovery of his own self-awareness. Everything comes together at the end with a message of hope (primarily for the director). The beauty of the movie is how we are able to follow the character's collapse and rebirth. It is also in the way we can see the rest of the world through his own eyes. This is the sort of movie that will expand with each re-viewing. The DVD contains a second disc with information and reviews about the movie and the Director.
This is a good movie that caught me off-guard because I was victimized by too much advance hype. I understand the hype but it would have been better to discover it for myself. Discover it for yourself and it will be a movie you'll remember.
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Reviewed in the United States on April 4, 2004
