ESCAPE… AND CAPTURE
JUN 5, 2010 – FOR A FILM CHOCKFULL OF SURREAL SET PIECES (or, perhaps, for a director whose films seem but an excuse for surreal set pieces), it’s entirely unsurprising that the opening is one too. The story is about a director (Guido, played by Marcello Mastroianni) who doesn’t know what to film next. He’s writer-blocked, unable to move ahead, and in the first scene, he’s blocked in a traffic jam, literally unable to move ahead. The camera pans over stalled vehicles as far as the eye can see. Guido glances left, towards the back seat of a car, and sights a gent in a beret and a pencil moustache. The man turns and looks ahead, at a woman who appears to have fallen asleep at the wheel. Their car, interestingly, is headed in the opposite direction. Guido is hemmed in from everywhere. The camera returns to the pencil-moustached man, and back to Guido, whose hand locates a wipe-cloth. He cleans the windshield. So far, we’ve only seen Guido from behind. We are yet to see his face.
The so-far-silent stretch starts to choke with its first sounds. Gas fills the car and Guido begins to gasp. Outside, everyone is staring at him, though no one shows the slightest inclination of actually helping him – even the row of hands hanging out from a bus are still. Guido’s problem is his, and his alone. He presses against a door which doesn’t open. He reaches for the other side, his palms plastered squeakily on the window pane. His gasps increasing in panic, he bangs on the window. A man in a nearby car just looks on, his face a frozen mask. Meanwhile, in another neighbouring car, a man with a cigarette stuck in his mouth strokes the arm of the woman beside him, who shows signs of arousal. They, probably, aren’t even aware that there’s a problem outside, that Guido’s legs are pressing against the window in a futile attempt to escape asphyxiation – so wrapped in their own lives are they.
But somehow – and the point is that we don’t exactly see how; the creative processes, after all, cannot be explained – he clambers out to the roof of his car. With the others watching silently and with his arms outstretched, Guido begins to glide out of the tunnel, over the roofs of other cars. His clothes whip about him, from the wind, which steers him higher and higher, towards clouds, towards the sun. Guido, finally, has escaped. But on the ground, on a beachfront, as a man arrives on horseback, another man mumbles, “Counselor, I’ve got him!” He begins to tug at a rope. “Down! You come down!” Earth beckons. The practicality of making a movie (into which heavy investments have been poured) beckons. Escape is not an option. We look down at earth, at reality, from Guido’s point of view, the other end of the rope looped around his feet. He comes crashing down just as he wakens from his nightmare. And we still haven’t seen his face.
8½ (1963, Italian, English, French German; aka Federico Fellini’s 8½). Directed by Federico Fellini. Starring Marcello Mastroianni, Anouk Aimée, Sandra Milo.
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Just Another Film Buff
June 4, 2010
Back truly to the old format, eh? Surprised that this film hasn’t featured here yet.
Legends aside, I guess this (and La Dolce Vita) is the film that Scorsese would have wished that he had made. It is perfect Scorsese material…
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Venkatesh
June 5, 2010
One of the best opening sequences in all of Cinema. This film also has one of the best music scores, beautiful beautiful.
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Sunil Tyagi
June 5, 2010
What a scene!
Thanks for describing it. It refreshed my memory. What an opening scene, what images that set-up the show for the entire film.
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Suresh
June 5, 2010
BR,
I don’t know about others but I found 8 1/2 to be an extremely funny movie. I laughed out loud at many places. You are on spot when you say the whole movie is made of many memorable set pieces. The good thing is they are funny as well.
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vikram
June 5, 2010
Superbly evocative write-up BR. 8and a half was the first film of Fellini’s I saw…came very close in trying to take viewers thru the creative process…btw, did you get to see the hollywood version released a few months back- Nine by Rob Marshall…and what did you think of it?
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brangan
June 5, 2010
JAFB: Dude, why do you say “old format?” This is still the opening, right?
Venkatesh: Actually, all of Fellini’s films have exquisite scores — even the bizarro ones. Perhaps the freedom of the imagery brought out the best in Rota (as in not having to write for stories with conventional trajectories).
Suresh: Some parts of it are indeed very funny. I love the harem sequence that’s, on the surface, hilarious. But there’s also something very poignant about it — a grown man being infantilised by his women.
vikram: I didn’t mind Nine. Some of the numbers were beautifully staged. The problem, though, was that the film was just musical sequence after musical sequence, with no connective tissue. So I guess, as an independent film, it has its issues. But if you view it as a companion piece to 81/2, it has a lot of nice moments. Daniel Day-Lewis, though, left me cold. This needed Antonio Banderas.
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Venkatesh
June 5, 2010
BR : “Perhaps the freedom of the imagery brought out the best in Rota (as in not having to write for stories with conventional trajectories)” — hmm, not sure about that , Rota after all did GodFather as well and that is the definition of a conventional story line.
Rota is just a genius Full Stop.
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Just Another Film Buff
June 5, 2010
BR: I don’t understand. I thoughtthe new format went about describing the opening in detail and then a review of the whole film. No? In that case, it is good to see that the new format is just a special case (part of the pic=first part of the pic) of the old one. Right?
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brangan
June 5, 2010
JAFB: Yes. Instead of a “part of the pic” from anyplace, I now talk about the opening “part of the pic.” The intent is still to detail a scene. Just that it’s now the opening (in relation to the rest of the film).
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anon
June 5, 2010
9 needed Javier Bardem. Baderas is slumming it these days playing Puss in Boots…
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Arif Attar
June 6, 2010
“I have absolutely nothing to say. But I want to say it anyway” Guido tells his wife’s friend during the tour of that outdoor set.
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Ramesh
June 9, 2010
nine was bat guano. Javed akhtar son might as well have made it.
this was my live review from the movie theater as facebook updates.
http://rameshram.wordpress.com/2010/01/03/ninemarshall-2009-the-facebook-status-update-review/
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Yadu
June 10, 2010
Interestingly, I think MF Hussains’s Meenaxi, had a similar story line. Instead of a Film director, here it’s a poet who’s lost his mojo and dreaming of a damsel who’ll fire his imagination. Tabu at her sensuous best..
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ramesh
June 10, 2010
did you see the latest hitjob against indian cinema?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/jun/08/bollywood-adolf-hitler-film
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