8½ does a really good job at getting you into the confused and anxious headspace of an artist desperate for inspiration. It is autobiographical in this sense, pointing to a time in Fellini's career after he had achieved international celebrity status for LA DOLCE VITA (1963), where he now struggled to replicate his genius all over again. What would his next film be about? What if it sucked? What if no one embraced him again, as they did with LDV, or worse, ceased to recognize him as a filmmaking virtuoso? What do you do when creativity runs thin and you have no actual story to tell? In Fellini's case, you make a film precisely about that: A film about the crisis of inspiration, the purgatory of artistic blockage, the hell of making art. 

I've seen this film five times now, and the thing I find most amazing about it is how clear the story is from an academic perspective, but how muddled and empty it feels narratively. The film has this built-in defense mechanism that almost makes criticism impossible, because the moment you underrate any specific scene as messy, confusing, or bombastically self-indulgent, you got Fellini there to remind you that the filmmaking process is all of those things, and therefore a free pass must be given to its half-baked ideas. It's a deeply clever twist on the stream-of-consciousness filmic style that allows the story to transition between sense and nonsense, reality and fantasy, genius and stupidity, all without warning. I honestly can't tell you where I stand on this film. It perches on such a thin cusp between greatness and hollowness, moving me in ways that both fascinate and repel simultanesouly. 

I'm enamored by what Fellini does in the film. He essentially takes a self-important artist through an expressionistic landscape of the filmmaking process itself, then asks us to embrace Guido's life and his art wholesale, regardless of how impulsive, silly, and self-obsessed it might be. Through this reckless and fantastical filmmaking style, Fellini's really asking us to see Guido as an extension of himself: "Embrace me, love me, sing my praises," he whispers, "even though I have no clear vision on how to get my point across." 

The opening sequence captures this frustration to a tee. Guido is stuck inside a stifling traffic jam, symptomatic of writer's block perdition. He climbs out of his vehicle and soars high above the clouds, a symbol of freedom, of eureka, of sudden inspiration. However, people down below want to prevent Guido's dreams from becoming too out there, so they tether him like a kite in order to ground his fantasies to Earth. 

In truth, the opening three minutes of 8½ says it all. One of the world's most renown directors has run out of ideas. He's creatively constipated, but he's found a way out. He's going to make a film about making a film, a witless and somewhat incomplete idea, but there will be others who will badger him along the way to make it more clear, organized, and intelligible. Does Fellini ever get organized in telling this story? Does he ever get pulled back to Earth, back to reality? Or does he just abandon all realism in favor of clouds and fantasy? I honestly believe he could've told this story much, much better and still get the same themes across, which probably means I secretly wish those dudes on the beach tugged a little harder on that string.

Fellini Ranked