Some things aren't clear, what we encounter hasn't been filtered to make sense for us. "8 1/2" and his other project I admire ("Block-notes di un regista") have the filmmaker distinctly in the thing. Even the edges of the frame are perfectly placed, so as to remind us of the window we peer through. Its an essay, "explained" because both the filmmaker and the viewer stand outside it. It sees and judges this is a film that assumes judgment. The "neorealistic" films are composed by a self that stands outside. Usually this form is considered realistic or neorealistic and the later films fantastic surreal. But why is this one recommended to be rejected and the later one valued? Because of the cinematic form, dear friends. But I see it as about Fellini's own self inflicted, selfaware malaise. I suppose it is true that you could see this as about the bankruptcy of Roman aristocrats, or about more general bankruptcy of men. Nor famously did it against Fellini's, which is why, after a celebrated crisis, he developed a different style for his next films. But it doesn't measure well against my soul. It is art, and for reasons beyond itself, you should see it. (I wish some Japanese filmmaker would do for this what "H Story" did to "Hiroshima Mon Amore" but in Barcelona.) So it is a competent film, even decorative. When strained through the cloth of cinema, we have something like this film. Men merely stand between surrounding walls and the woman who made them whether she is present or not. In this world a convincing one women define the world by their being, and all spaces physical spaces I mean are carried by them into existence. Its roughly the same shape: Fellini himself, an empty and artless man posing as an artist who can only place himself in a definition of emptiness defined by the seven types of women. I recommend you see this because it is a necessary launching ramp for "8 1/2." I believe that film is essential viewing for any citizen of the world, and to get it, you have to sit through this. Read elsewhere for comments on the decorative qualities of this. This is excellently executed, but with art the only demand is that it cross a threshold of competence, making it close enough for us to reach. If someone talks about that, it isn't from their heart and doesn't really matter. Comments about the execution are irrelevant, really. That's the only thing that matters, all else falling away. Though Nico would later delve into more abstract territory, this record captures all the tragic, twisted beauty that defined one of pop’s most compelling figures.When it comes to art, the best one can do is receive it with grace, measure it against one's soul and if one is so inclined, speak from the heart about it. Dylan’s “I’ll Keep it With Mine” – one of the few tracks with no minor chords – serves as a rousing counterpoint to the dour misery mire that surrounds it. With her inimitable near-baritone, baroque orchestral accompaniment, and help from talented songwriters (mainly former bandmates Lou Reed and John Cale, and also a pre-California Jackson Browne), she inhabits emotions rarely explored in pop music: heartbreaking, immobilizing indecisiveness in the soaring “the fairest of the seasons,” world-weary detachment in “these days,” and seasonal affective despair in “winter song.” The most explicitly experimental track – “it was a pleasure thing” – is a Celtic death ritual with Nico moaning ethereal high notes over a din of feedback and lacerating guitar. Chelsea Girl, her debut as a solo artist, is Nico at her most vulnerable and sad. If anything, she was an ur-goth, an artist plagued by darkness and haunted by her insecurities. She didn’t conform to any presubscribed roles for female musicians she wasn’t an earth mother, a self-righteous folkie, or a wide-eyed innocent teen temptress. She gallivanted around an abandoned castle in La Dolce Vita, fraternized with the scenesters and freaks at the Factory, and briefly fronted the Velvet Underground. O Nico! Demure melancholic, wanton femme fatale! Warbling siren of ennui and hopelessness! With the defeatist longing of an Old World aristocrat, the deadpan sexuality of a courtesan, and the glazed-eyed fragility of a junkie, Christa Päffgen cultivated an impressive cult of personality.
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