In 8½, Federico Fellini builds a story that looks simple on the surface: a blocked film director retreats into memories and fantasies.
8½ is a film about the film that never gets made. That sentence may be the best way into a film we have been discussing for years.
The film doesn’t answer; it sharpens the question. The ending neither ties the knot nor abandons us—it sends us out with a question that walks us home.
On a second viewing, details surface that escaped us the first time: an object in the background, a pause, a repetition. The film is a house we enter through a different door each time.
Its relationship to its time is remarkable. Without sloganeering, it portrays a society where private relationships and larger structures are intertwined. Politics here happens in kitchens and corridors.