Throwback Thursday: Sometimes Even When You Don't Understand a Dylan Song You Can "Get It"

“I don't like the idea of 'understanding' a film. I don't believe that rational understanding is an essential element in the reception of any work of art. Either a film has something to say to you or it hasn't. If you are moved by it, you don't need to have it explained to you. If not, no explanation can make you moved by it.” ~Federico Fellini

There it is. This is what some people mean when they talk about art, whether music, poetry or a painting. It's like a joke; you shouldn't have to explain why the punch line was funny.

To this day I don't "get" Dylan's "Changing of the Guard," but it moves me every time I hear it, and remains one of my favorite Dylan songs. What's it all about, Alfie? The images connect with something inside like a series of dreams, rising up from a subconscious sea teeming with shimmering mysteries.

In his book The Dylanologists David Kinney devotes one chapter to the Lyrics Dissecters. These are the ones Fellini is calling out above. It's like Dylan's lyrics are a secret code to be cracked, if only we had an Enigma Machine.

People have the same problem with abstract art. "I don't get it" has been exclaimed in art museums and galleries all over the world.

"Ballad of a Thin Man" is another song that falls into this category, difficult to apprehend but one that definitely haunts. The opening bars on the piano send a chill through the room and the confounding imagery shocks and frightens. Something's happening, even if you don't know what it is. "You try so hard, but you don't understand," Dylan hisses.

The words and images can confuse, but when ignited there can be light, revealing the outlines of shapes and scenes that darkness conceals.

* * * *

For what it's worth, Duluth Dylan Fest is just around the corner. May will be here faster than you know it. The events are slated for May 17-24 this year. If you want to celebrate with us here in Dylan's home town, mark your calendars. There will be a birthday celebration on his 85th, May 24, in front of the house he grew up in. And there will be plenty of music... some of it you'll "get" with your head and some with your heart.

Meantime life goes on all around you. Be a part of it. 

Project Hail Mail Reflects Recurring Images and Storylines from Film History

I'd heard enough raves for Project Hail Mary that it got my attention. As I considered going, what caught my eye was that directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller had been screenwriters for The Lego Movie, which I found sizzling with great lines and a clever storyline. 

Imdb.com places the film in several categories including Buddy Comedy, Sci-Fi, Epic, Adventure and Comedy. My take is that it's essentially the story of a lonely problem-solver in space, with both overt and subtle echoes of earlier films. We'll return to this after briefly outlining the story.

Here's how Amazon MGM summarizes it: Science teacher Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) wakes up on a spaceship light years from home with no recollection of who he is or how he got there. As his memory returns, he begins to uncover his mission: solve the riddle of the mysterious substance causing the sun to die out. He must call on his scientific knowledge and unorthodox ideas to save everything on Earth from extinction... but an unexpected friendship means he may not have to do it alone.

In other words, it begins as a mystery. Who am I? Where am I? Why am I here? Why am I all alone? There's a sense in which we ourselves periodically need to take stock of our lives and ask outselves these fundamental questions.

Tributes
A few days after seeing this film I reflected on how many previous films were echoed here. The most obvious, of course, is Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. The lighting and manner in which Ryland Grace's spaceship silently glides through deep space is pure Kubrick magic. The infinite frontier, the massive emptiness, and the loneliness.

A second film seems directly echoed in this one, in a different way: Spielberg's E.T., the curiously cute creature from another world who is unable to effectively communicate that he wants to go home. And yes, that is the trajectory of Project Hail Mary as Ryland Grace succeeds in making contact. with alien life. And "Surprise!" The film transforms from a mission to save the world into a love story.

The Martian is a third film this story pays tribute to. As it turns out, both Project Hail Mary and The Martian are based on novels by Andy Weir. Both involve hard science and technology, and both feature a character in similar circumstances, alone and a long ways from home.

The next echo for me, and I'd like to know if it was intentional, is Fellini's 8½. You may be curious how that film relates to this one. If you recall the storyline, it is about Italian director Guido Anselmi (Marcello Mastroianni) who is having an existential crisis. But the backstory is that he has been contracted to direct is an epic science-fiction project about humanity fleeing a dying, post-apocalyptic Earth. In several scenes we see a large set made of vertical pipes, poles, and scaffolding is the massive, unfinished rocket launch pad / spaceship launch tower built for the science-fiction film that the protagonist, Guido, is supposed to be making.

The reason I draw attention to this is that when Ryland Grace reaches his destination, the spaceship for the alien (Rocky) looks like this strange assembly of rods, poles and pipes. Having seen Fellini's famous flick twice this past year, the rods, pipes and poles image was fresh in my mind. 

Other films this film may have drawn inspiration from might include Oppenheimer (sparks and SFX in his semi-lucid dream sequences), Apollo 13 (survival through improvisation), and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (communication across species barriers). There are no doubt others, but these are all films I'm familiar with that seem reflected here.

One last comment. Yesterday Artemis II launched, the first step in a new chapter for the space program. This has been a long time coming. Was there some measure of coordination between these events? Maybe not. Sci fi fiction has a long history, and whatever unfolds in real life will likely have been foretold in one form or another creative minds making imaginative connections. 

8½ -- The First Seven Minutes

What is this film about? Chaos striving for resolution? Fellini translates his inner struggle into a story line that audiences can experience themselves.

Guido Anselmi (Marcello Mastroianni), a film director stuck for inspiration in the middle of writing a screenplay, is having a midlife existential crisis. His doctors suggest that he withdraw to a health resort. His wife Louisa, his mistress Carla, his friends, his actors and his producer come to pay a visit. They all want him to finish writing the film. Insead, he takes refuge in endless daydreaming. Wandering between memories, dreams and reality, Fellini the artist plays out his own anxiety toward the act of creation.

Copyright 1962.  Embassy Pictures

Angelo Rizzoli Presenta

8½  DI FEDERICO FELLINI

The first shot features cars jammed together, waiting, not moving, not unlike the crammed vehicular sardines on the Staten Island Ferry. The camera appears to be stationed on the ledge inside the rear window of a car stuck in the middle, capturing the back of the driver's head in silhouette. The driver is wearing a brimmed hat. The traffic is stationary. Through the front windshield we see a man in the back seat of the car in front of him turning to look a him.

The second shot is from outside the car, slightly elevated. From this angle we can see that it's not a ferry but an underpass, with cars backed up as far as the eye can see.

The camera, inside the car again, pans about and we see the faces of other drivers and occupants while our central character begins to notice steam, or some kind of fumes, coming in through the vents. The driver, whose face we have not yet seen, begins to panic, attempting first to stop the fumes from coming in and then attempting to open the door, which is jammed or immovable for whatever reason. Faces in the other vehicles are staring now, wondering what will happen next as our central character gasps and grunts, becoming increasingly agitated.

The camera pans to a man's face in the next car, who stares without emotion. In another car a lascivious old man is stroking the bare shoulder of an attractive young woman who slithers responsively to his touch.

At this point our central character has managed to get a window open and in a contorted manner he wriggles out and begins floating, ascending above the traffic jam while more faces stare. Arms spread he is moving sunward into the clouds. 

The camera catches a glimpse of a strange vertical structure and then cuts to a man on horseback wearing a cape, galloping along a beach.

"Counsellor, I've got him," a man says. The man on the beach in a long-sleeved white turtleneck, holds a rope somewhat the way a boy holds a kite string. "Down, come down," he says, and we see the rope is tied around the ankle of the man who floated up toward the clouds.

The camera cuts to a priest, reading something, who says, "Definitely down." And the floating man begins falling rapidly earthward.

Cut to a dark bedroom, a hand reaching up as an anguished man groans.

Another man wearing a lab coat over a white shirt and tie bursts in, saying, "Excuse me for disturbing you so early. How are you feeling? I'm a great admirer of yours. I'm delighted to meet you. May I?"

We can now see the visitor is a doctor as his nurse joins them from the other room. "May I use your typewriter, sir?" the nurse asks, which she proceeds to do.

"Roll up your sleeve, please. Keep it relaxed," says the doctor. 

The camera angle switches to show the front of a newspaper which the patient appears to be reading. When asked how old he is, a voice answers, "43." The newspaper drops away and we see it is the doctor who was reading it. He is smiling, leaning forward with interest. "Well, what are you working on now? Another film without hope?"

This is the first clue about the identity of our central character.

"First time you're taking the cure?" the nurse asks.

"Yes."

We still have not seen the face of this man who was stuck in traffic, escaped, flew toward the sun, crashed to earth and is now being attended to by a doctor and nurse. It's apparent the first sequence was a bad dream. It's also apparent that this is no ordinary film.

After a knock at the door, an older man wearing glasses and a receding hairline enters, hesitating at first because of the presence of medical staff. He says "Good morning," then asks if it is OK to smoke. He's wearing a bathrobe, pajamas and slippers. Are we in a house or a hotel? 

The doctor asks our central character to cough, and he coughs. And then to breathe, and he takes a deep breath. The patient's face is still hidden, his robe pulled over his head while he lies face down on the bed.

As the doctor finishes he looks at a bed where several dozen photos of women's faces are laid out. Only now do we see that this patient, a filmmaker, is Marcello Mastroianni. The doctors give him instructions to take mineral water in three fifteen minute intervals before breakfast, the mud baths and some other instructions for the first week, then suspending that for two days before continuing.

Mastroianni walks slowly, somewhat dejectedly, into the bathroom and for the first time we see his face, looking haggard, dark bags under his eyes, more like he's been punched in the face than simply exhausted from lack of sleep. Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries begins as he ponders all these things. Newspapers lay strewn about on the floor.

We are now five minutes into the film. Who is this man? And what is going on here? Clue 1: He is a screenwriter/filmmaker whom we shall soon learn is Guido Anselmi. Clue 2: His films are pessimistic downers, lacking in hope. 

For the next two minutes the Wagner theme accompanies what might pass as an elaborate scene involving Guido as a passive observer walking through the mud baths compound. The camera pans a parade of staring, indifferent or leering faces, elderly people and others with disabilities. People who know him are demanding something from him... producers and investors want to know what the film will be about. Actresses want to know if they will get a lead role based on the screen tests.

"It's sad for a man to realize how miserably he has failed," someone says about Guido.

* * * 

Numerous film makers give a nod to Fellini in later works. Terry Gilliam's Brazil emulates the flying dream in which Sam Lowry soars above the clouds only to be yanked back to grim reality by bureaucratic forces, a deliberate nod to Guido’s kite-string fall from the sky. Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries in Apocalypse Now was consciously selected by Scorscese in response to its use here by Fellini.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind likewise features a sequence that parallels the opening with a suffocating, surreal car interior from which the protaganist escapes into dream logic, then suddenly falls back-to-reality with a jolt tha is structurally very close to Guido’s traffic-jam nightmare.

This opening sequence planted seeds for scenes in All That Jazz, Bad Education, Babylon and other films as well. Woody Allen's Stardust Memories is a love-letter/parody of 8½, the opening itself almost a shot-for-shot homage: a depressed celebrity filmmaker (Allen) trapped in a stalled train car filled with grotesque, staring passengers. He escapes through a window, ending up on a sunny meadow with beautiful people before waking up. Allen has repeatedly called the 8½ traffic-jam dream the greatest opening in cinema.

* * * 

Are we watching a Fellini autobiography? At one point Guido says, "I thought I had everything clear in my mind. I wanted to make an honest film, no compromises."

TO BE CONTINUED

Mastroianni in the Mirror: Searching for a Soul in La Dolce Vita

If you know Spanish, "Dulce" means "Sweet." And "Vida"means "Life."  La Dolce Vita is an Italian film but you can easily see that both Spanish and Italian are siblings in the Romance language family, and the meaning is plain: The Sweet Life. 

The iconic Fellini film was cutting edge as a harbinger of the fading of Existentialism and the dawn of new philosophical age, the Age of Irony, later re-labeled Post-Modernism. Irony has become a central characteristic of the postmodern world. Where modernism (the existential response to Nietzsche's Nihilism) still believed (even in its despair) that meaning could be recovered or rebuilt, postmodernity surrendered to the wink, the shrug, the knowing smirk. Nothing is sacred, nothing is serious for long, and sincerity itself is treated as the ultimate naïveté.

In Fellini's La Dolce Vita (1960), Marcello Rubini (Marcello Mastroianni), a jaded tabloid journalist, drifts through the hedonistic high society of Rome in the late 1950s. Over seven nights and dawns, Marcello chases fleeting pleasures—orgies, celebrity scandals, intellectual debates, and miraculous hoaxes—while searching for meaning, love, and artistic fulfillment. The film is ultimately a portrait of the moral emptiness and spiritual malaise beneath the glamour of “the sweet life.”

While watching, I couldn't help but think of the opening scene from a book I'd read about Johnny Carson. It begins with a party. The crème de la crème of Hollywood are gathered at some luxurious home, awkward and slightly uncomfortable until Johnny and his wife finally show up. The author, Carson's personal attorney, paints a cynical picture of a houseful of superficial people living shallow lives.

You can see why that scene comes to mind as La Dolce Vita delves into the same themes of fame, decadence, and the superficiality of celebrity culture. It's a film about the contrasts and contradictions within high society as well as a nuanced commentary on the nature of fame and its impact on the individuals who covet it and the society that is infatuated with it. 

Some people have called La Dolce Vita one of the most influential and visually intoxicating films ever made. Like all major films, it is replete with memorable images, scenes and lines. I doubt that anyone watching today, however, can avoid thinking about Princess Di when celebrity star Sylvia (Anita Ekberg) is being pursued by a barrage of paparazzi.  

The famous set pieces—the opening shot of a helicopter carrying a statue of Christ over modern Rome, Anita Ekberg’s midnight frolic in the Trevi Fountain, the haunting beach sequence with the dead sea creature and the unreachable girl watching from afar—have been heralded as staples of cinematic history. 

"Marcello." Wine and pigment on 
illustration board

Mastroianni’s performance steals every scene: weary, charming, self-loathing, and at times unexpectedly cruel, a lost soul in a sea of decadence. The supporting cast (Ekberg, Anouk Aimée, Yvonne Furneaux, Alain Cuny) inject vivid life to Fellini’s gallery of beautiful, broken souls.

The film is both a celebration and a brutal autopsy of excess, and its critique of celebrity culture, paparazzi frenzy, and spiritual bankruptcy. 

This kind of moral bankruptcy is nothing new. We're more than familiar with the decadence of King Louis XIV, or the Emperors Nero and Caligula of Rome who spent fortunes on palaces, jewels and bizarre amusements including lavish public games to display dominance and curry political favor. The Gilded Age in America (1870s-1910s) featured palatial mansions and extravagant parties (with solid gold flatware and full orchestras while millions lived in overcrowded tenements.) The Belle Époque in Europe (1871–1914), the Roaring Twenties, and the Lolita Express are all reminders that there's nothing new under the sun. For evidence, check out Psalm 73 from 1,000 years B.C. 

La Dolce Vita is currently rated 8 stars out of 10 at imdb.com, and its stature continues to climb. If it has any flaws, perhaps some might give a demerit to the film’s 174-minute runtime. Yet even its sprawl can also be interpreted as deliberate, mirroring Marcello’s endlessly aimless wandering.

A Lost Masterpiece: Fellini's 73 Ambushes and Captivates

Mastroianni as Francesco Conti

It appears that I'm on a Fellini kick, having been enthralled by his films when I was in college.  Watching them more than a half century naturally adds perspective that I could never have had in my youth. I never watched all of Fellini's films the way I did Kubrick and attempted with Hitchcock, but I saw quite a few. Despite being outside Hollywood, he is one of the majors as a director. This is a review of his film 73, a small, almost clandestine film that he never quite admitted was autobiographical.

Directed and co-written by Federico Fellini the 110-minute film again stars Marcello Mastroianni in the company of Anouk Aimée and Laura Antonelli.

Shot quickly between the baroque excesses of Roma and the haunted nostalgia of Amarcord, 73 is a whisper where most of his work shouts. It's also, without question, one of his most painful and beautiful.

Marcello Mastroianni (playing a character named Francesco Conti) is a fifty-year-old matinee idol whose face has begun to look like a tired carnival mask. After a near-fatal heart attack on the set of a ridiculous spy thriller, Francesco experiences what he can only describe as a visitation: a quiet, almost embarrassed encounter with Christ in a hospital corridor lit by failing fluorescents. He wakes up a believer. Not theatrically, not with trumpets, but with the sheepish certainty of a man who has discovered what people mean by the twin notions of peace and joy.

The film’s first half is vintage Fellini farce: Francesco tries to confess in three different Roman churches and is turned away each time (too famous, too late, too many photographers outside). One priest mistakes him for a paparazzo. Another asks to have his picture taken with him. A third simply locks the confessional when he hears the name “Conti.” Fellini films these scenes with the merciless glee of La Dolce Vita, except the laughter keeps catching in the throat.

Then the tone changes. Francesco finds a tiny evangelical parish in the outskirts, a converted barn where working-class Romans sing off-key hymns and drink real coffee after the service. He starts attending incognito (bad wig, sunglasses at night, the full ridiculous arsenal). He wants to belong, desperately. He learns the chords to “Amazing Grace” on a battered guitar. He brings expensive pastries and is politely asked not to, because they make the poorer members of the congregation uncomfortable. He tries to give testimony and is gently cut off after twenty minutes because “Brother Mateo has prepared something on the Book of Habakkuk.” Mastroianni’s face during that scene (half crushed, half illuminated) is worth more than most directors manage in a lifetime.

I found myself rooting for Francesco to make it, to be at home with his new family. It was hard to read how this would unfold.

Fellini refuses to mock the parishioners. That is the film’s great, almost shocking act of grace. These are not grotesques; they are ordinary people with crooked teeth and sincere handshakes. The cruelty comes from Francesco himself, from his inability to shrink to human size. When he finally explodes in frustration (“Don’t you know who I am?”), the room falls silent, and you feel the old Fellini thunder. But the thunder is followed by rain: a quiet elder takes Francesco outside, points to the night sky, and says, “Up there, nobody’s famous.”

The final sequence is pure cinematic sacrament. Francesco returns to the empty soundstage where he once filmed a sword-and-sandal epic. He walks among the ruins of cardboard temples and plastic lions, humming the hymn he never quite mastered. The camera cranes up slowly until he is just a speck beneath the rafters, still humming, still trying. The lights dim one by one, fade to black. Credits roll over silence.

73 was barely distributed. Fellini called it “a home movie I accidentally showed to strangers.” Critics at the time found it minor, even embarrassing. Today it feels like the key to everything else: a great showman confronting the one audience that will never applaud him. It's tender, funny, merciless, and finally heartbreaking. In a catalogue full of masterpieces, it may be the one that hurts the most, because it is the one in which Fellini finally asks to be forgiven, and isn’t sure the answer is yes.

Watch it alone. Watch it late. And when the last light goes out on that abandoned set, you will understand why Mastroianni, in his memoirs, simply wrote: “That was the best I ever was.”

Fellini's 8 1/2

Any list of the greatest film directors would be incomplete without Frederico Fellini. Near the top of many lists of great films is Fellini's 8 1/2, a strange title for an ambitious and perhaps equally strange film. Watching it again the other night was breathtaking.

The film begins with director Guido Anselmi (Marcello Mastroianni) in a car on a ferry, not unlike the Staten Island Ferry. He is sitting in the car like all the others in the cars and buses around him. A gas of some kind begins to come into the car through the vents and he finds himself unable to open the windows. He is stuck inside his own car, his situation, and cannot escape, while everyone around him looks on indifferently. It is his life and his nightmare. Through great effort he manages to crack the window open and somehow climbs out, only to float up into the air.

What a great opening. We know right off it is no ordinary film. The casting, the lighting, the meticulously shot camera work all reveal a masterful attention to detail. The dream sequence also lets audiences know that the story will map internal as well as external events in the life of its main character, a director undergoing a serious life crisis.

Stories like this give writers an opportunity to produce lines, thoughts and impressions that you just can't always easily work into a straight story. In this film there are just so many such lines.

Late in the film Guido laments, "I thought my ideas were so clear. I wanted to make an honest film. No lies whatsoever. I thought I had something so simple to say. Something useful to everybody. A film that could help bury forever all those dead things we carry within ourselves. Instead, I'm the one without the courage to bury anything at all. When did I go wrong? I really have nothing to say, but I want to say it all the same."

And in another place, "All the confusion of my life... has been a reflection of myself! Myself as I am, not as I'd like to be."

The story itself is about a director who is now famous because of a previous great film. He is attempting to live up to the expectation that he can do it again and the pressure is on. His life is very public, and crowded.

The film is also about his relationships with women. And the wife who endures his philandering, his bad behavior, to whom he has not been faithful. Guido is no saint. Nor is he happy, and at one point he confesses as such to the Cardinal.

Guido: “Your Eminence, I am not happy.”
The Cardinal: "Why should you be happy? That is not your task. Who told you we come into this world to be happy?"

Ultimately 8 1/2 is a work of art. Every shot, black and white, could be a movie poster. The scenes flow into one another like life itself. In the end, the engaged viewer takes something away with each new encounter.