| RATING: | 100% |
| FORMAT: | DVD |
A kind of brilliant travelogue of decadent life in modern-day Rome that, despite its length, never bores and constantly amazes. We watch the emptiness of the characters’ lives with an awed fascination out of all proportion to the superficiality on show. Director Fellini has managed the seemingly impossible by telling a brilliant morality play about boring people which does not, itself, bore.
Along with the shallowness of the Western culture exposed here, comes the inevitable gullibility of those who believe in nothing so that they end up believing in anything. Like the journalist anti-hero, the director takes everyday events and packages them into sellable stories - no matter the truth. Only the legend matters, in commercial terms, so we are alternately fascinated and appalled by the content of this movie as we are today when he hear of the latest mediocrity raised to star celebrity level or of press parasites exploiting someone’s suffering for profit.
The film is also a technical masterpiece with lustrous cinematography that makes you wonder why so few movies today are made in black & white. A movie that you cannot watch only a portion of because it draws you in so totally that the hours fly by.
The central story of a hack writer with literary pretensions and a failing marriage never quite drowns in the wealth of character and cultural detail of a world built on intellectual sand. A stylish film with genuine content about stylish people lacking a real core to their lives.
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