Guido Anselmi (Marcello Mastroianni) is in a bit of a personal and professional crisis in Fellini masterpiece “8½”
WEEKEND CLASSICS: 8½ (Federico Fellini, 1963)
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September 2-5, 11:00 am
Series continues through September 25
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“Your eminence, I am not happy,” Guido (Marcello Mastroianni) tells the cardinal (Tito Masini) halfway through Federico Fellini’s self-reflexive masterpiece 8½. “Why should you be happy?” the cardinal responds. “That is not your task in life. Who said we were put on this earth to be happy?” Well, film makes people happy, and it’s because of works such as 8½. Fellini’s Oscar-winning eighth-and-a-half movie is a sensational self-examination of film and fame, a hysterically funny, surreal story of a famous Italian auteur who finds his life and career in need of a major overhaul. Mastroianni is magnificent as Guido Anselmi, a man in a personal and professional crisis who has gone to a healing spa for some much-needed relaxation, but he doesn’t get any as he is continually harassed by producers, screenwriters, would-be actresses, and various other oddball hangers-on. He also has to deal both with his mistress, Carla (Sandra Milo), who is quite a handful, as well as his wife, Luisa (Anouk Aimée), who is losing patience with his lies. Trapped in a strange world of his own creation, Guido has dreams where he flies over claustrophobic traffic and makes out with his dead mother, and his next film involves a spaceship; it doesn’t take a psychiatrist to figure out the many inner demons that are haunting him. Marvelously shot by Gianni Di Venanzo in black-and-white, scored with a vast sense of humor by Nino Rota, and featuring some of the most amazing hats ever seen on film — costume designer Piero Gherardi won an Oscar for all the great dresses and chapeaux — 8½ is an endlessly fascinating and wildly entertaining exploration of the creative process and the bizarre world of filmmaking itself. And after seeing 8½, you’ll appreciate Woody Allen’s 1980 homage, Stardust Memories, a whole lot more. “Weekend Classics” continues September 9-11 with Fellini Satyricon before concluding September 23-25 with City of Women.
I remember the first time I saw the BBC series Ways of Seeing, thoroughly entranced by the host, a curly-haired British art critic with the cutest little lisp of his “R”s who promised that, while looking at European painting in a whole new way, “we shall discover something about ourselves and the situation in which we are living.” Years later, I was distraught when I couldn’t find my paperback copy of the companion book; my wife quickly ordered it and it was soon in my hands, where I devoured every word and image again and again. So I was terrifically excited when I heard about the new documentary The Seasons in Quincy: Four Portraits of John Berger, which opens August 31 at Film Forum. Perhaps my expectations were too high, but I came away from the four-part film feeling disappointed and let down; I selfishly wanted only Berger (pronounced with a soft “g”) but instead got too much of his friends and colleagues. And to make matters worse, the directors are too often what Berger tried so hard to avoid being throughout his long, influential career: pretentious. The film begins in winter with “Ways of Listening,” in which director Colin MacCabe focuses on Berger and his longtime friend, Oscar-nominated actress Tilda Swinton, as they talk at Berger’s farm in the small French town of Quincy, where he moved in the 1970s after becoming fed up with England. Filmed in 2010, the segment works best when Berger tells personal stories about his father and war; Swinton listens while peeling apples, the camera on her as much as on him. It occasionally feels as if she can’t decide whether to share Berger or keep him to herself; they already have a special connection, sharing the same birthday, albeit thirty-four years apart. But I wanted to make my own connection with Berger, a down-to-earth intellectual with a lust for life and a wide-ranging legacy, an artist, critic, “radical humanist,” social commentator, political activist, husband, father, farmer, and self-described “revolutionary writer” who prefers to simply be known as a storyteller.
Takashi Miike, who about fifteen few years ago had New York filmgoers rushing to Film Forum to see Audition — and then rushing to get out because of the violent torture scenes — did it again with Ichi the Killer, a faithful adaptation of Hideo Yamamoto’s hit manga. When Boss Anjo goes missing while beating the hell out of a prostitute, his gang, led by Kakihara (Tadanobu Asano), a multipierced blond sadomasochist, tries to find him by threatening and torturing members of other gangs. As the violence continues to grow — including faces torn and sliced off, numerous decapitations, innards splattered on walls and ceilings, body parts cut off, and self-mutilation — the killer turns out to be a young man named Ichi (Nao Omori), whose memory of a long-ago brutal rape turns him into a costumed avenger, crying like a baby as he leaves bloody mess after bloody mess on his mission to rid the world of bullies. This psychosexual S&M gorefest, which is certainly not for the squeamish, comes courtesy of the endlessly imaginative Miike, who trained with master filmmaker Shohei Imamura and seems to love really sharp objects. The excellent — and brave — cast also includes directors Sabu and Shinya Tsukamoto, composer Sakichi Satô, and Hong Kong starlet Alien Sun. The film is screening as part of the Nitehawk Midnite Screenings series “Crime,” which continues through October 30 with such other very different thrillers as William Friedkin’s The French Connection, Abel Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant, George Lucas’s THX 138, John Boorman’s Point Blank, Richard Brooks’s In Cold Blood, Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element, and Gordon Parks Jr.’s Super Fly. 
In Dani Menkin’s Is That You?, young film student Myla (Naruna Kaplan de Macedo) is making a documentary, asking strangers what they regret. If she asked me, I might just have told her that I regret having watched Is That You? Nominated for an Israeli Academy Award for Best Picture and winner of Best Indie Film, Dani Menkin’s Is That You? is a convoluted road-trip movie that manipulates its paper-thin plot until almost none of it makes sense. Israeli film, television, and stage favorite Alon Aboutboul (London Has Fallen, The Dark Knight Rises) stars as Ronnie, an outdated analog man in an ever-more-digital world. After losing his job as a projectionist in an Israeli art house, Ronnie heads to the States, determined to find his lost love, Rachel, who he has not seen in nearly forty years. He picks up an old used car (no fancy new styles for him) from his brother, Jacob (Rani Bleier), and sets out on his mission. The lemon soon breaks down, and Ronnie is offered help by Myla, whose film is called The Road Not Taken. Moved by Ronnie’s story, Myla joins him on his journey, taking her brother’s SUV, without permission. As Ronnie and Myla try to track down Rachel, who can’t seem to settle down in one place for very long, they stop along the way so Myla can interview people on the street and in their homes, getting them to share what they would change in their lives if they could. But the hardest person to get to open up is Ronnie himself.