La Dolce Vita (1964, Federico Fellini)
I think it’s only fair that I start this review by telling you the conditions under which I saw it. It was day three of Ebertfest 2007, in the packed Virginia theatre, with 1,500 other film fans. It was evening and we had been in the theatre all day. It was hot — stifling, actually, and we were tremendously tired. I dare admit that none of us knew if we could make it through a three-hour existential, black and white Italian movie at this point. I don’t know if any of this worked to the movie’s advantage or not, but there it is.
The protagonist in the movie is Marcello (Marcello Mastroianni), a gossip columnist and a playboy, who spends most of his time among the rich and famous, seeking happiness in the most unlikely places. He engages in meaningless sex, participates in extravagant parties, and in the meantime, tries to do his job.
In many ways, the movie doesn’t have a traditional plot, and I think it would be unfair to start analysing it as if it did. However, there is gathering momentum throughout, which really kicks into gear when Marcello goes to the airport to greet the famous movie star Sylvia (Anita Ekberg). He is immediately charmed by her exquisite beauty.
In the course of the next week, Marcello flirts with Sylvia, has a couple of fleeting encounters with a bored socialite (in the home of a prostitute, no less), all the while ignoring his girlfriend. He inhabits a world that is glamorous, superficial, hedonistic and self-indulgent. That’s all this movie is on the surface: a sequence of decadent experiences severely lacking traditional moral values.
I think this disjointed nature of the storytelling and the depravity of the situations is what disconnected me a bit from the movie. It’s really very hard to identify or sympathise with any of the characters. I could never really shake the feeling that what I was witnessing was pretentious and manipulative. But maybe that’s the point. The audience is the voyeur, getting a glimpse at “the good life” (or maybe it should be the “not-all-it’s-cracked-up-to-be life”).
I think to really be fair to this movie I need to see it again. I just don’t know if I have it in me; it feels like a once-in-a-lifetime type of thing. There’s no denying it’s a masterpiece on some level (so many people seem to love it), but if I strip away its reputation, I still can’t say more than “I enjoyed it”. For whatever that’s worth.
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