Fellini's 8 1/2, Revisited

Today at Filmwell, a film blog (?) that lives at The Other Journal, Michael Leary and I begin an epic journey, playing Siskel and Ebert all the way through what the Sight and Sound 2012 critics poll has voted the top ten films of all time.

We begin with #10... Federico Fellini's 8 1/2.

In it, Leary writes...

This film really gets that. It is an honest film because it doesn’t attempt to fix Guido or explain his malaise. Toward the end, Guido says: “I wanted to make an honest film, with no lies of any kind… I thought my ideas were so simple. That would help us to bury all that is dead inside us.” While Guido’s attempt fails, it seems that Fellini’s hasn’t.

I really love what Leary's saying here. In a way, he's affirming what Wim Wenders said about filmmaking in the Filmwell post that immediately preceded this conversation:

allowed

One thing I forgot to mention in my conversation with Leary... I didn't realize that the dance scene starring John Travolta and Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction was actually a recreation of a dance from 8 1/2.