Part I

It seems that creativity is a force all its own: independent of any rational thought, apart from our own conscious thinking and alone on its often quixotic quest to produce something wonderful, beautiful, depressing, empty. Federico Fellini’s film 8 1/2 (1963) is an intricate meta-textual portrayal of that force and how it functions within a brilliant subconscious mind. In fact the setting of the film is his own subconscious, as we follow a character extensively based on him – down to Fellini’s own clothes and mannerisms. Our protagonist, Guido Anselmi, is a symbol for Fellini, or more appropriately a personification of the torchbearer of Fellini’s subconscious domain. Rather than directing in the actual world, he creates and functions within Fellini’s mind while sporting Fellini’s famous hat and scarf. Guido continuously fluctuates between his perceived surreal reality and an even more surreal world made up of his memories and mirage-like dreams. He is in reality just rummaging through the mass information in Fellini’s mind, as he himself drives his thinking.

This film is named very pragmatically, as Fellini had already directed six films, co-directed one and filmed two short segments; this is number eight and half. Similarly, Guido is working on his new movie, and is seen from the very beginning to be struggling from an existential crisis. Apart from his woes regarding his failing marriage, his ambiguously defined faltering morality and his persistent childhood recollections, Guido is experiencing some form of writer’s block. Worsening his situation is the fact that his status as the great Guido Anselmi (AKA Fellini) creates the expectation under which his new film should be on the eve of completion, but alas no roles are cast, no plot has been written and the only tangible part of the movie that exists is a humongous spaceship launch pad that seems to serve no purpose other than in proving that it is done.

In 8 1/2 every important character stands to serve one purpose: to elucidate in actuality the different functioning elements of Fellini’s writer’s blocked subconscious mind. The academic who chases Guido throughout the film is the amalgamation of all the pressure that publicly recognized masters such as Fellini face. In short the academic is the intelligentsia, consistently critiquing, analyzing and to some extent expecting too much. Maurice the magician, a seemingly minor character, is in fact the clearest symbol of Fellini’s creativity. As we see during his first of two appearances in the film, he can read minds; when he reads Guido’s thoughts the symbolism is blatantly clear: Fellini’s creativity can interpret his own subconscious thoughts and will be the entity that molds his ideas into cohesion. Maurice is central, and he is the force that appears in the final scene to interrupt the Academic’s criticism to say that the film will go on. He does this as the Academic extols Guido’s final renouncement of his film and as workers begin to take apart the spaceship launch pad. Here Fellini’s creativity awakes from its unproductive slumber and proclaims with the tip of a hat, “siamo pronti a cominciare” (we are ready to begin).

This film is a portrayal of how Fellini’s subconscious creates with the templates, archetypes and rules that it has in its disposal in the form of characters, memories and perceptions of reality. The film is the visual portrayal of Fellini’s own life of continuous berating from the intelligentsia, struggles with internal complexes and most of all the intensity with which the floating ideas of his deepest thoughts become recognizable, all taking place in his world of thought. When I read Donald Barthelme’s Snow White, which approached the quintessential fairy tale in a perversely experimental form, I felt that the deconstructed text and fragmented collage-esque train of thought similarly approached creative thinking from the deep recesses of subconscious thought. I was curious to see how a literary text tried to take a story and tell it in a way more reminiscent of narration during a deep comatose dream.

The final scene of 8 1/2 is both beautiful and remarkably surreal; it follows a failed press conference at the site of the spaceship launch pad during which Guido realizes he has no more steam left to power his fading attempt at this film. Walking away from the set the academic launches into a didactic speech of literary allusion and dense philosophic metaphors essentially saying you fucked up, but good on you for quitting. Sitting in his car with the academic Maurice appears to congratulate Guido and sets the action into motion with his statement. After Guido’s voice-over monologue of self-realization all the characters from the film appear in white to come together under Guido’s direction and make the film, which in this case involves holding hands and dancing in a circle as a circus band plays music lead by schoolboy Guido. The final scene of 8 1/2 deserves to be seen in post-modernist prose akin to Donald Barthelme’s Snow White – not because it stands to be improved, but rather that the literary form can show this artistic process through a difference window. In the form of pseudo-deconstructed prose, Fellini’s subconscious inner workings will be projected into the verbal narration of the inner mind of a person trying to create. Part II is the literary reading of a script that follows the subconscious as it creates.

Part II

Come on boys, this has to be down in two days the mind shouts!

“Lei ha fatto benissimo,” (you have done well in the polite form) says ACADEMIC. He is the intelligentsia, he is the one who critiques and destroys until little is left except a projection screen flickering in anxiety.

He is a philosopher, a follower, a killer of intuition and of creativity.

“NO” he shouts NO NO NO

“I am the force driving you. Tear down this structure, this spaceship launch pad, for we are launching nothing until 9 1/2. 7.5 winners for 8.5 attempts isn’t too bad. Quit while you’re ahead. Stop while you can, and try anew, and rid yourself of that ridiculous spaceship launch site” ACADEMIC says. He continues, “we intellectuals, and I say we because I consider you such, must remain lucid to the bitter end.”

Condescension is his game. Cite Rimbaud one more time and I’ll scream. Je Est Un Autre but why should I be any other than I?

This is all I hear; and for this I cannot continue. Why should I continue?

Come on boys, this has to be down in two days. clang

“Distruggere e meglio che creare,” (To destroy is better than to create) ACADEMIC says, because destroy, destroy, destroy while you still have the hands to create, before your creations make you inept of creativity.

I see how you think.

But why clean? Why should I strew the ground with salt – as you claim the ancients did to purify the battlefield?

CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG, the set is being broken

CLANG, and this onomatopoeia does me no good! None, for if the spaceship does arrive, from where will we depart? When the lights are off, and the stars quit their hiding behind photons, how will we fly?

Why did I build this in the first place? This launch pad will do nothing. There is no spaceship. I am looking for peace and I cannot find it. I will run under tables covered in tablecloths until I find quiet, until the ACADEMIC shuts his mouth and until some idea finds me. For I am through searching. Find me! Find me before I fade and my images and thoughts are suffocated under layers of other academic pages on the ACADEMIC’s desk.

! (This is important so listen up). “I’ve exclaimed, with exclamation before I’ve even spoken,” says Maurice.

“Siamo pronti a cominciare,” he continues.

What does my creativity want, for it knows I am fresh out of ideas to give it? Ready? We are not, for you are too weak – too weak to power this creating. And my wife, she knows I am cheating on her, and she screams. But my mistress is boring. So boring. Sgulp.

“Congratulations” says Maurice.

Such large and melodious thoughts descend upon me; Whitman said something along those lines.[1]

“If we can’t have everything, true perfection is nothingness. Forgive me for quoting all the time-”

SHUT THE FUCK UP

Luisa

Rossella

Carla

La Saraghina

Mother

Come hither! For I wish to speak. Maurice is correct. I’m back. Climb into your spaceships and fly to me. I am a star, and I no longer hide.

ACADEMIC, you ask how I benefit from stringing together the tattered pieces of my life? The people I have meet and later imagined, that you say I have never loved? My vague memories? They may be vague and tattered to me, but Maurice can sew them together. I love each and every one of them, even those I hate, for they shine brightly outside the window of my spaceship. Maurice can read minds, and when he reads yours he sees nothing but pages from the writings of other men. He sees Heavy Heidegger and Ripped* Rimbaud, Jolly John Stuart Mill and Kourageous Karl Marx, Naughty ol’ Nietzche and mystical me, but none from you. You are a walking citation. You claim your job is to sweep away the thousands of miscarriages that come to light every day. Sweep away, but this child will be born. You call me a cripple leaving my crooked footprint in the sand? So be it, but my footprint will fossilize and one day be put behind glass at the Cinema Museum in Torino, along with my hat and scarf, but you will forever reside in the deepest halls of dungeons in the form of libraries. AWAY!

“What is this sudden happiness that makes me tremble, giving me strength, and life?” I say this. I just did. Luisa I love you.

I’m sorry. Now I understand. Now I am free. Maurice has freed me. He has acted in part as my marriage counselor and he did not charge a dime.

Accendi! (Turn them on)

Luisa, don’t you see?

Le luci! (The lights)

I’m just as confused as before, but the lights are on. All my vague and tattered memories are walking towards me, and so are you.

“Life is a celebration. Let’s live it together.” I say to you Luisa!

Yes Luisa, I know you are not sure, but you can sure as hell try and I will help you every step of the way. I love yo- Look Luisa it’s the schoolboy version of me. Wasn’t I cute? I played the flute, and now my childhood self leads this circus band! Clowns, ACADEMIC, you may call me a clown, but even as a child I lead them you fool!

Ba da da da da da da ba ba da da da da daaaaaa

Everybody walk down the stairs! Everybody come!

Ba da da da da da da ba ba da da da da DAAAAA

“Talk to each other,” I say. I am your director. The rules have been cast, and you are now all method actors. You are playing yourselves.

Sgulp. No no, let’s talk later. You’re playing my mistress, but you are no longer my mistress. Run! Dance! And talk to everyone! Join the line!

MAURICE!!!

“Everyone together,” I scream through my funnel! My hat, my scarf!

Come Luisa; let us dance around this spaceship as the music plays. Let us dance until this rocket arrives. We are a tribe and this is our rain dance,

(Do you know the old joke about why the rain dance always worked?

Come on; it’s obvious. Because they would dance until the rain came)

this is our rocket dance.

And we will dance until our rocket comes.

[1] The quote is, “Why are there trees I never walk under, but large and melodious thoughts/ descend upon me.”

* Drunk and high

Works Cited

8 1/2. Dir. Federico Fellini. Perf. Marcello Mastroianni. Cinerez, 1963. DVD.

Whitman, Walt. “Song of the Open Road.” Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation, n.d. Web. 23 Apr. 2014.