The Long View

Emily Dickinson provides one of the finest tests of art: “If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?”

I am thinking of Federico Fellini’s 1963 film, 8 1/2, which I first saw when I was in high school, an exploration of memory and desire and a movie unafraid of examining the spiritual and intellectual currents of the mid-twentieth century (and also not afraid of mocking intellectual poseurs). It is by turns poignant, outrageous, satirical, painful, joyful, and glorious–like life. Filmed in gorgeous black and white with often hypnotically composed scences accompanied by a score from Nino Rota,  it tells the story of a film director at a moment of spiritual and artistic crisis.