The Voice of the Moon (1990) User Reviews

Care in the Community - Italian Style

[Krustallos · 7/10 · 27 September 2004]

Not many directors would choose the end of their career to head off in an entirely new direction, but that is very much what Fellini does here. This was his first film based on a novel (Ermanno Cavazzoni's "Il poema dei lunatici") and quite a radical departure in terms of style.

In a move which apparently alienated many of his traditional audience, the film-world is almost entirely the one experienced by the central characters, Ivo Salvini and to a lesser extent Gonnella. This subjectivity of approach was of course used in "8 1/2" but in a less extreme and clearly autobiographical way. Here, Fellini makes the brave decision to keep contextualisation and explanation to a minimum, leaving the unwary viewer flailing about in search of a foothold. As Ivo's state of mind drifts between lucidity and hallucination, we seldom know what is 'real' and what is imagined, even down to the words spoken by other characters.

"Felliniesque" themes such as the love/fear of women, religious superstition and motifs like madonna statues and mountains of pasta are revisited from this rather skewed perspective, but the film overall has a dislocated feel which is far away from the likes of Roma or Amacord.

Interestingly, Benigni is asked to act here, rather than doing his usual schtick, and does well as a Chaplinesque figure who occasionally reminds one of Guilietta Masina.

This is certainly not what you might call classic Fellini (he confessed to a crisis of confidence writing it) but there is much to enjoy and to wonder at in this last work. The man himself regarded it as the "orphan" of his films and hoped it would come to be better regarded.

Devotees of Terry Gilliam will note the original of the waltz scene lifted for the following year's "Fisher King".

Fellini's last film not quite vintage but still striking.

[jrglaves-smith · 7/10 · 13 September 2003]

It is a pity that Fellini's last film is not better known as it represents something of a return to form after a series of disappointments. .Fellini's visual imagination is still intact but some of the wonderful precision of imagery is no longer present. Perhaps by the end of his career too many of his old collaborators had died or retired. The best part is the first half hour seen entirely from the perspective of the insane central characters. Their obsession with the moon provides the alibi for many evocative night shots, (I've often thought that one thing that distinguishes great film makers is how they film the night), as well as the spectacular climactic sequence when they imagine that they have trapped the moon. Elsewhere there is typical Fellini fun with the crowning of 'Miss Flower' complete with an outsize King and Queen of the Gnocci and a final shower of flower on all the contestants. 'La voce della Luna' shares much of 'Ginger and Fred's' distaste for the contemporary world summed up in a sequence in which a disco rave is interrupted by a Strauss waltz. This is far more poetic and unexpected than anything in the predictable 'Ginger and Fred'. Those worried by the narrative incoherence of Fellini can bury their boring heads in a screen writing manual. Perhaps the current international popularity of Roberto Benigni, little known outside Italy when the fim was made may yet allow this flawed but haunting film to gain the audience it deserves.

Madness and Fellini

[gavin6942 · 7/10 · 18 October 2017]

The amusing and entertaining adventures of a recently released mental patient (Roberto Benigni) and his band of misfits, discover conspiracies to concur while looking for love.

Acclaimed director Federico Fellini wrote a short treatment for this film in two weeks with his long-time scribe Tullio Pinelli as early as summer 1988. Returning to themes they first explored in "La strada" (1954), the duo crafted a parable on the whisperings of the soul that only madmen and vagabonds are capable of hearing.

The film screened out of competition at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival, where it was panned, misunderstood and/or ignored by the majority of North American critics. One critic boasted, "Absolutely ravishing. I've never been so bored in my life". Ultimately, Fellini's last film became his first never to find a North American distributor. At least until 2017 (more on that shortly).

One might think this is the sort of film that would grow in reputation over time. Those who saw it in 1990 likely did not know this was the final Fellini, and that alone should give it a special place in our hearts. Yet, critic Michael Scott pulls no punches when he calls the film "an unwanted, undercooked, post-meal main course, just as you are ready to slip into your pyjamas." He also says it is "the best example yet of the train wreck that can occur when you give a visionary unquestioned creative control but take away his glasses; it looks stunning but is nigh on incomprehensible."

He does concede however that the "visuals ... rank up there with the most impressive of Fellini's entire body of work." Herein lies what, I think, makes the film worth a second (or third) look. The color scheme is striking, especially on the new (2017) Arrow Films Blu-ray with a new scan. The blend of fantasy, madness and reality is cleverly blended, with one scene of lovemaking while a rumbling train passes quite memorable indeed.

The Arrow Blu-ray looks great, and does bring this Fellini to America for the first time ever. The special features are slim, but it does include an hour-long documentary on the film, which is really indispensable and perhaps would help change Mr. Scott's opinion? Certainly it puts the film in its proper place in the world of Fellini.

A sad farewell indeed.

[christopher-underwood · 7/10 · 24 February 2020]

This is a sad swan song from the director. In many ways. It is a rambling affair, too wordy and shot as if on sound stage with harsh and uncompromising light. Yet there is something about the (oh so Italian!) characters that come and go we imagine, throughout the overlong running time, that the whole will spark into life. It doesn't but what is so sad is that there are, now and again, moments that jump out as trademark Felliniesque visions. Flimsy white lace costumes revolve in unison, a beauty contest promises to burst forth, a group of unfortunates gather to catch a glimpse of 'pussy' as a neighbour undresses and finally a tethered moon brought to Earth. But overall and despite treasurable seconds this stands as a rather forlorn and unconsummated endeavour. A sad farewell indeed.

"It seems my whole life is just this night" - Fellini still had it till the end, even if it wasn't his best

[Quinoa1984 · 7/10 · 13 August 2020]

Probably the only time in cinema where Michael Jackson ("The Way You Make Me Feel" specifically and an inspired dancr sequence) gets a transition into the Blue Danube waltz, and rhsn back again so that's certainly something!

Plotless, rambling, and has more than a few moments where Fellini and his crew place actors and light and setting and music just so to make cinematic poetry: memories as stanzas broken up by the little bits where story appears to be taking place. It sounds contradictory, but what keeps it from being among the filmmaker's best is what is still very interesting about it: Benigni is s man who (after a little time to surmise) is out from a mental hospital and is wandering from town to town, looking for a woman that he adores from his past and interacts with other characters who have their own histories and mysteries and whatnot... And that's it, that's the movie - and all the while, to the director's credit, he gets a real performance out of his star and not merely circus shtick (which is what I assumed many years ago when I first heard of this that it would be).

As with many Fellini, it may just be too much to take in in one sitting, but on the other hand Im not sure I... Care that much about this character and his search for this woman who really doesn't want to see him. And yet, there are brilliant scenes and flashes of greatness through out, wild bits like the one man who gets married and when his wife has sex with him it becomes like being on an actual train that rocks and rolls and creates panedemonium and smoke, or the Blue Danube dance and everyone at the dance breaking out in applause, or that shot where all of those figures with big black garbage cans walk in formation into town. And other times, just as impressively, Fellini slows his usual madman roll snd lets Delli Colli keep the camera more still (or occasionally, something I don't remember from him before, handheld).

At its most enlightening and satisfying, it's a melancholy but entertaining journey through memory and not even desire so much as longing, like tbe ending with Benigni looking up at the moon. It's also about twenty minutes too long (that long sequence in the town square where, uh, suddenly there's a big screen up showing people crying and begging to a fake moon - it really dragged to nothing satisfying), and I wish there was a little more time to understand what the Prefect character was all about as a lost soul. But, even with its flaws, it's still a lovely experience because it's Fellini finding ways to rediscover his passions and interests in exploring memory, regret and the desire to want to fly in the sky, figuratively and literally.

Fellini at his most poetic

[steve-muratore · 7/10 · 13 June 2021]

Don't know why I'd never seen this one before, but I'm sure glad I've seen it now.

Not good!

[RodrigAndrisan · 1/10 · 21 December 2018]

Fellini is my favorite film director ever, because of "La Strada", "The Nights of Cabiria" and "Amarcord". "La Strada" is the best film ever and Giulietta Masina the best actress ever. But, the last movie of great Fellini is a big boredom. The presence of super annoying Roberto Benigni makes the film even more unbearable. You wait two hours for something to happen and nothing happens. Paolo Villaggio is not funny at all. Very uninspired choice, Benigni, wrong choice, the script. Only Nicola Piovani's music is beautiful.

Visual poetry

[rockisforever · 10/10 · 2 July 2007]

This is one of Fellini's best movies, and one of the most underrated pictures of all time. This masterpiece includes all the main themes of Fellini's career. It doesn't follow a "prose style", but a "lyric style". It's like a visual poem. In fact this film narrates the journey of Ivo Salvini (Roberto Benigni) through dreams and memories, which actually belong to the great director. As a matter of fact Salvini, alter ego of Fellini, says: "I love to remember, maybe more than living". The protagonist wanders in the countryside, asking himself about life, and meets Gonnella (Paolo Villaggio), who feels himself oppressed by the giant and factitious society, made of useless appearance. The noisy square is the symbol of a chaotic society (circensian, as Fellini would say), where the individuality is dead, superseded by an alienated mass. This crowd is insensitive to the voice of inner being, to the voice of the moon. In this film the noise contrasts with the silence, the loud public square contrasts with the noiseless countryside, which helps along subjectivity. The omnipresent television clashes with the moments of poetry, like the scenes of Benigni reciting poems of the Italian romantic poet Giacomo Leopardi. Poetry wins over the modern society, which doesn't listen the voice of inner being, deafened by the noise of the Machine. Poetry is like a flight, like a dance, like music (the waltz scene in the disco is wonderful). At the end only the most misunderstood people can catch the moon, that glow of infinite. Nobody can explain what happens. Maybe it's not necessary to explain. It's enough to keep silence and listen. Benigni and Villaggio are two great actors, the soundtrack by Nicola Piovani is impressive and touching, the set design by Dante Ferretti has a beautiful imagery, and the direction of the master is outstanding as usual. All that enables us to listen for a moment the voice of the moon.

Reheated Leftovers that Still Taste Pretty Good

[davidmvining · 6/10 · 12 January 2021]

Fellini's last movie. He started his directing career with Variety Lights in 1950 and ends it here, in 1990, with forty years of change to his beloved home country in between. It turns out, though, that Fellini didn't have a whole lot more to say. He'd been repeating certain ideas since the fifties, but he'd been able to provide new twists and variations, the most interesting in his late career being his self-reflective turn in City of Women where he provided a critique of his own view of women. The Voice of the Moon feels like a light bauble to end a great career with, more like a coda than a final statement. That's not to say that there aren't joys in this final film, but it just seems to come to very little while repeating too much.

The two main characters of The Voice of the Moon both have mental issues. The first, Ivo, played by Roberto Benigni, was released from a mental institution, and the second, Gonnella, was a local magistrate but removed from his post because of rising senility issues manifested by obsessions with conspiracy theories. Ivo is a wistful young man who hears voices from the moon and from wells in the middle of the night. He seems to have trouble interacting with most people such as, early in the film, a group of young men crowd around an isolated house to watch a woman undress and he can't keep quiet, loudly trying to tell the other guys something that made him laugh. He drifts through their small town, mostly idolizing the local beauty Aldina, a blonde who wins the regional beauty contest.

The two end up meeting about halfway through the film in the town market, bumping into each other for the first time, and Gonnella's conspiracy mindedness immediately hits a chord with Ivo. When Gonnella starts pointing out people around them acting normally but insisting that it's all an elaborate act to lull him into a false sense of security, the innocent Ivo starts to consider it. Gonnella latches onto Ivo and Ivo latches onto Gonnella, and their journey culminates with them discovering a rave in an old, remote, and large building. Set to Michael Jackson's "The Way You Make Me Feel", Ivo casts off his ideal Aldina who scoffed him endlessly, offering up the shoe of hers he had been holding onto almost the entire movie and finding that it fits on every woman's foot he meets. Gonnella critiques the gyration that is modern dancing, recalling the more elegant form he had practiced as a young man before his love, a woman he calls a French Duchess, appears out of nowhere and the crowd gives them space to dance to "The Beautiful Blue Danube".

The end of the movie is an extended outdoor press conference after two local brothers who owned construction equipment had used their crane to capture the moon and hold it to the earth with rope in a nearby barn. I was enjoying the film as the kind of loosely episodic adventure that Fellini had become well-versed in until this where the final sequence seemed to be taking up questions that the rest of the movie had never concerned itself with. Fellini often returned to the idea of meaning in the modern world, but the familiar satirical targets reappearing here, in particular the Church, felt out of place considering what had come before as opposed to the same target feeling like a natural fit in a movie like Roma. It didn't help that Ivo and Gonnella are barely involved in the events as well.

Eventually, the movie ends with Ivo hearing the moon speak to him about how his grandmother laughed every time she saw him and Ivo walking up to a well bemoaning how no one listens anymore because the world is too loud.

I can't say that I disagree with Fellini about the modern world generally being too loud for quiet introspection, but the way he presents the idea in The Voice of the Moon ends up feeling like the rantings of an old man who's found that the world has passed him by. In particular, Gonnella's dance seems to stem from that, and it turns what could have been a beautiful moment of things lost to time into something much more bitter, a tone that doesn't really fit well with Fellini's carnivalesque milieu in general. His satire always had bite, but he dressed it up entertainingly in a way that softened the initial impact with the satirical elements needing to be teased out a bit, but the softer exterior feels almost completely removed here.

In terms of repetition, this usually isn't something to bring up in a review. Fellini approaching the same idea for the 20th time could have the same impact as the first or the fourth, but here the ideas feel more like going through the motions, like Fellini is just bringing them in because it's habitual rather than he has something else to add to the idea. The ideal woman, for instance, is Aldina, but Ivo just gives her up in a (possible) fantasy sequence where every woman can wear her shoe. It almost feels like a throw away moment rather than the point of Ivo's journey which, when mixed with Ivo at the end, talking to the moon about quiet, almost ends up feeling like it's from a different movie.

Now, that's not to say that there isn't fun to be had in this movie. Fellini knew what he was doing in individual sequences that hold up in isolation quite well. The story of Nestore and his recently divorced wife's insatiable sexual appetite is amusing, for example. The press conference around the captured moon is controlled chaos executed well, with an idea at its core about searching for meaning. I just don't think that Fellini's loose production style ended up pulling all of his ideas together. It was always a risk with how he worked, and I just don't think that the bet paid off this time.

The Voice of the Moon is the work of an artist too set in his ways to really break out of them, too enthralled to the same ideas that have dominated his work his whole career to say much new, and too talented to let that drag the whole affair down.

More with a whimper than a roar...

[MOscarbradley · 4/10 · 22 November 2020]

Federico Fellini's virtually unknown final film is neither the almost total disaster many people claim it to be nor the late masterpiece it could have been. It is, however, typical Fellini, certainly typical of his work from the mid-sixties on, full of whimsical middle-aged men and large-breasted women. We could be back in the Rimini of "Amarcord" but instead we are in a mythical town where nothing seems real and with everything unfolding as if in a dream. It's certainly hugely self-indulgent while lead Roberto Benigni has always been an acquired taste. In its favour you might say that two minutes in and you know you are watching a Fellini film even if it's a bad one; his signature is in every frame. If, like me, you regard him as one of cinema's great visionaries you will be massively disappointed and if you've always thought of him as overrated you can safely say 'I told you so'. I wish I could simply chalk it down as an interesting failure but it's less than that; a sad end to a greatly distinguished career.

One of Fellini's most underrated films, and undeservedly so...

[TheLittleSongbird · 8/10 · 16 August 2012]

Is La Voce Della Luna one of Fellini's very best? Not for me, I consider the likes of Nights of Cabiria, La Dolce Vita, 8 1/2 and Amarcord better movies. But it is one of his most underrated movies. Some of the structure is a little dislocated, but even with that there is still much to like. Watching the visuals it is like visual lyric poetry, every frame is beautifully shot and the scenery is really stunning. The music is beautiful as well and Fellini's direction is superb with his themes of women and religious superstition on display and conveyed interestingly and intelligently. There is definitely his unique style, not just in the basic feel of the film but also in its themes. La Voce Della Luna is mostly very moving and haunting in feel as well. The acting is great, Roberto Benigni gives one of his most humanistic and understated performances and it is just wonderful and very natural, while Paolo Villaggio contrasts superbly with him. Overall, deserves to be better known as it is a very good movie. Not classic Fellini but should be more well known as just his last film. 8/10 Bethany Cox

A dreamlike journey at Fellini's career moonlit twilight...

[ElMaruecan82 · 7/10 · 31 August 2021]

"La Voce della Luna" or "The Voice of the Moon" is the last Fellini feature film I had yet to watch... and fittingly the last Fellini movie, his swan song, his epitaph, a beautiful ode to the unique reveries that old age might inspire, coincidentally released the same year than Akira Kurosawa's "Dreams"... or maybe it is just a small oddity that would content Fellini completists like myself and there's not much to say about that film that isn't exactly in the same league than "La Strada" or "La Dolce Vita". But after watching the 2002 documentary: "Fellini, I am a Big Liar" I suspect that the Maestro never intended to make masterpieces, he simply let his inspiration get the best of him and translate it into his own cinematic language, he was a true Artist, a poet and like most poets, misunderstood.

I didn't understand "Voice of the Moon" either... but it was a choice, I didn't care about understanding, I let myself transported within the melancholic and introspective mood guided the sight of a big bright full moon just like the tides... the film is about two men, two misfits who according to many reviewers, represent the two sides of Fellini: Ivo Salvini (Roberto Benigni) is a madcap little man who hears the moon whispering his name from a well (has there been a more lyrical osmosis between imagery and sound ?) he wanders under the pastoral emptiness of a landscape that recalls Fellini's hometown. It's interesting that his first movie "Lights Variety" was about the turbulent night life in Post-War Italy with jazz, nightclubs or mambo dancers you could meet anytime in a deserted street (and here's Cabiria emerging from memory) but Italy of the 1990 has surrendered to the boisterous flashiness of media, dance music and beauty pageants, it's Berlusconi time, and Fellini like a dying breed of men longs for silence, for the quietness of the night, the time where you can listen to yourself.

The second character is a malcontent politician named Gonnella (Paolo Villagio) a stocky man wearing a scarf, a fedora hat and a trench-coat and whose stocky allure recalls the Maestro himself, his discretion is tainted with disappointment and defiance toward the world, he refuses to join a party of old men who cordially invites him, fearing that this would be a banquet held by the Grim Reaper, his eyes lacks the very bliss that fills Ivo's eyes, and within their interactions, the way both listen one to another, there's the spirit of a Fellini with a foot on the grave and the other foot still dancing...I was afraid that the film would be set at night and would only be a series of disjointed vignettes filled with rather lackluster moments but it's a little more than that and as the story progresses, we can feel the inspiration of the Maestro growing and ending with a great finale and dance sequence and a sort of mishmash of all the names starting with P, players, prostitutes, politicians and priests and only in a Fellini you'd have a sort a giant gate opens to reveal a rave party with Michael Jackson's music playing, but just when you think this is Fellini, without Nino Rota, surrendering to modernity, the music transitions to a great waltz under the Blue Danube.

That's it. Fellini's movies never prepares you for anything and as he said in his interview, he doesn't make movies with a script but with an inspiration, a set of imagery before letting the magic of dreams resurfacing and being the action's catalysis, Fellini's language is so unique that when you watch his movies, the plot is totally accessory, what you follow is a sort of continuum of images and lines that sound like lyrics we sing while being numb by the inebriating effect of life and the haunting prospect of death... at that point I daren't overthinking "Voice of the Moon" because to be fair, this is a true riddle for ages, and after his nostalgia-loaded "Ginger and Fred" "Intervista" where we could say goodbye to his iconic partners-in-crime Marcelle "Come Here" Mastroianni and Guiletta "Cabiria" Masina, "Voice of the Moon" must be enjoyed like the final spurt of creativity of a humble genius at the twilight of his life who could afford to make a puzzling ode to the night whose dark clouds were starting to overshadow the brightness.

I feel like I'm dodging the analytical aspect, I'm aware that there's a lot to interpret in this film, there are many faces to evoke, there's the scene with French actor Sim as an oboist who enjoys sleeping next to a cemetery, finding inner peace, a sexual scene that is shot like a vertiginous carrousel, all the Fellinian extravaganza is served us on a plate so we can taste it and digest it... but since this is his last film, I enjoyed the contemplating more than the savoring, not trying to find many answers and write a philosophical essay, I'll just say that the film has a beauty and a poetry of its own that's not everyone's cup of tea, maybe some Fellini fans would consider it a lesser film, which it is, as far as reputation and prestige goes, hard to believe the film wasn't even released in the U. S. but maybe Fellini had lost his touch with the public and it's interesting that his last film starred Benigni, the little clown who'd sweep the Oscars a few years later and who was himself a show to watch.

But no need to rumble on these trivia, "Voice of the Moon" is Fellini's epitaph and also a little trick he left us before leaving this world, a few months before Giuletta Masina, leaving our eyes to be dazzled, our feet to tap on the tempo on his catchy melodies.. and our head to scratch naturalmente.

Ciao, Maestro!

bitterness

[Kirpianuscus · 27 April 2021]

The bitterness is the basic trait of this last Fellini. You discover all what you know or define as Felliniesque. You admire Roberto Begnini , being more prepared to remind scenes from his last Pinocchios. You feel pity and admiration about characters. And you feel the fall of a world, suggested, in so precise manner, by entire atmosphere defining a simple - baroque good bye. A film only reminding themes, characters, idiosincrasies. And the bitterness as basic virtue.

Overly abstract concept resulting in a boring mess

[andromaro · 4/10 · 23 December 2022]

So much for the final work of Fellini. It could have been great, with names as Benigni and Villaggio, not to forget the monuments of Ferretti and Millenotti, but to me it was only a huge letdown.

It is basically a movie about the delusions of a crackpot who speaks "in poetry" to describe what's around him (mostly nonsense or trivial) and the voices he hears. It is not entertaining for the most part, you can only appreciate the creativity in the final, with the rave party and the moon "affair", but all resolves into nothing. The stylistic choice or not having lip-sync contributes to the idea of a cheap movie. Very forgettable, almost painfully boring.

Cute, Whimsical, Annoying

[thalassafischer · 6/10 · 19 February 2024]

The Voice of the Moon is one of Fellini's later films and while it doesn't display the same shameless misogyny as City of Women, his overhyped flick from ten years earlier, it becomes annoyingly weird right in the middle just like it.

Thus far Nights of Cabiria from way back in 1957 is the only film I've viewed that seems worthy of his praise as a genius. It's frankly the only Fellini film I've seen that's entirely coherent and serves some kind of greater social purpose than his own navel gazing self-absorption.

Don't get me wrong, the first 30-40 minutes of this movie are whimsical and sweet - with some random philosophy interjected without warning here and there - but after a certain point it's just a bunch of schizophrenic nonsense...which I guess it supposed to be reflection of the mind of the main character, an escaped or recently released mental patient.

the end of Fellini's career

[lee_eisenberg · 7/10 · 10 April 2024]

After almost half a century in cinema, Federico Fellini released his swan song in the form of "La voce della luna" ("The Voice of the Moon" in English). With this movie, Fellini continued his embrace of the bizarre, with Roberto Benigni's fake well inspector experiencing a kaleidoscopic world of beauty pageants, fascism, and pop music.

Apparently, a lot of critics maligned the movie. I guess that they didn't interpret it as being as artistic as most of Fellini's movies. Maybe so, but I found it to be an enjoyably surreal experience. To be certain, Federico Fellini's worst movie is still better than Michael Bay's best movie. I recommend it, even if it isn't up there with "La strada", "8 1/2" or "Satyricon".

To think that I watched a moon-related movie right after a total solar eclipse - with the moon blocking out the sun - passed over much of the country.

This is my favorite movie of all time

[karl_consiglio · 10/10 · 5 March 2006]

I love how subtly the real mixes with the unreal in Fellini's movies to the point that you are not quite sure which is which anymore. I love the poetry, a mad poetry of love, mystery and revelations. Benigni's role in this film is glorious. This film is drenched in an art of dreamy quality. Paolo Villagio is great in this movie too carrying an entirely different madness to that of Benigni's character. I just love the structure of this film as well as the poetic script. This film really moved me into a hypnotic state. Fellini is the Jung of movies, taking you further and further, deeper and deeper into a trance and then finally after putting you through a maze, a labyrinth of complex psychological truths tells you "Now look!"

Weird and poetic

[markmuhl · 8/10 · 20 June 2020]

An astounding movie that left me behind with a smile on the face. Its ending reminded me of the annoying feeling when having woken up after a beautiful dream.

In fact, the movie has something of a dreamland, where almost everything seems possible and space and time have lost their limitations. In Salvini, plaid by Roberto Benigni, it is presenting a modern fool as its very likeable main protagonist, who on his ways around a small Italian town meets all kind of weird characters and hears voices from the ground of the wells. The movie could also be described as a modern fairy tale that in some parts becomes quite reflective when disclosing some absurdities of modern life. When seeing those it becomes in a way comprehensible that Gonella, the 2nd main protagonist, has developed a certain paranoia and believes in a big world conspiracy.

It is also true that the movie does not have a lot of thrill because it is lacking a real story line. This fact, however, kept alive my curiosity because it remains unclear throughout the movie where the film is heading at and what strange things are next to happen. This concept does not necessarily work out but grandmaster Fellini succeeds one more time in presenting us a stream of lively and fascinating images. Some typical Fellini ingredients like madonna statues and fairgrounds are part of them one more time.

Overall, a film like a poem, that certainly is not everyone's cup of tea.

What an odd, dazzling, beautiful movie...

[phosie-943-377317 · 8/10 · 3 August 2020]

But also kind of sad and lonely. To me, it portrayed in a both poignant and light hearted way the often overwhelming complexity and seeming absurdity of life. A lot of beautiful dream-like imagery, too.

People are meeting and talking, but not really to each other, they aren't really heard or understood, or themselves understanding, as if everyone lives in their own world completely - especially the two protagonists... It felt both hilarious and poignant watching them in their ruminations and roamings. The contrast between them is interesting too: one has at least understood that he doesn't really understand at all, exudes an almost childlike innocence, while the other is an old grumpy man, overly firm in his convictions he has drawn out of his bewilderment and paranoia. But maybe they just exemplify this tendency of modern culture in an overdrawn, absurd, poignant way. Diversity and individuality but no unity and coherence. In a way this also encapsulates the postmodern zeitgeist.

Upon the ending, I really did feel like waking from a dream... When there are still some clear images which are slowly becoming more vague and you are trying to keep them alive, to put the pieces together, to make sense of it... Like you're facing an abyss and can hear an echo rising from its depth which slowly dies away... In these last moments, as all fades, the apex is finally reached in complete silence... All the turmoil of thoughts, beliefs and questions come to rest. You are left simultaneously awe struck, humbled and at peace. This is how I felt, anyway.

Throughout the movie, the tone of silence and contemplation is harshly contrasted by noise, obscenity, turmoil and chaos. Much just like life itself, when we stray from our center, our core, and lose ourselves in the maze of the "world out there"... I was often irritated - most by the scenes "in public", with its ostentatious noise and incoherence... It felt like the movie was going nowhere, and indeed it did, but in the best sense