Famous Italian film director Guido Anselmi suffers from “director’s block”. Guido helms a science fiction film and plans to infuse it with elements of his own life experience, hoping elevate the film to some great statement on truth and life. Attempting to recover from creative stagnation, Guido retreats to a luxurious spa but is followed by the entire film production, continually prying with questions on details of the unresolved film. Dodging the cast, crew, producers, and his wife, mistress, and responsibilities, Guido slips away to fantasy versions of his past life, reflecting on his childhood, religion, and relationship with women. He begins to believe his main character, a clear proxy for himself, would be made whole by meeting an ‘Ideal Woman’ character, who he constantly fantasizes about. But when he meets Claudia, the actress he envisions for the role, she asserts that an ‘Ideal Woman’ wouldn’t connect with a protagonist so incapable of love. Guido calls off the film, finally aware he cannot cinematically explore life’s meaning. He resolves to accept his life's journey, and the people in it, simply for what and who they are, and relishes in the literal, unrefined circus of life.
Holy crap. Amazing! I will be honest, 15 minutes in I was fully prepared to hate this semi avant-garde, surrealist, black-and-white, foreign-language film. But this stylish, funny, sexy, broken, insightful, Italian film just landed with me hard. It might be one of the great film’s I’ve seen through this project.
The film lives in this really interesting duality where we are watching a director attempt to make his movie—meanwhile, concurrently, the entire film *IS* the movie he plans to make, evident in scenes where he observes screen-tests for characters we’ve met earlier in the story. It’s pretty meta, and messy, and wonderful. It speaks to both the creative process and the search for life’s meaning in nostalgia, religion, and relationships, none of which is assured. No one was ever promised happiness, or clarity, or love. Sometimes acknowledging the search is what’s meaningful. I’m not a director, or an artist, but as someone who loves to communicate ideas, this film meant a lot. I sense that anyone who yearns to use their time on this earth to understand or say something about their journey will connect.