8 1/2 Essay Questions

Is Guido's final realization that he, along with the people in his life, must embrace his imperfect life a satisfying one? Is Guido ultimately a redeemable character?

Guido occupies a tricky space between being relatable and unlikeable. On on hand, the audience of 8 1/2 is given supreme access to Guido's subconscious and memory, which allows us to sympathize with him; we understand, for example, that he has lapsed from Catholicism because he was forced to do penance and scared off from religion as a child. On the other hand, we are also granted access to Guido's fantasies and especially to his real, present-day life, much of which reveals him to be selfish and unpleasant; this is as apparent during his fantasies of a wife that accepts his unapologetic affairs as it is in the numerous scenes wherein Guido refuses to supply his film's cast and crew with any information about the film itself. Indeed, it is a fluctuation between these extremes of intimacy/identification and disdain/alienation that informs the viewer's relationship to Guido throughout the film.

In one of his most honest conversations, Guido admits to Claudia that, like the protagonist of his film, he struggles to commit to any single idea or woman for fear that it is the wrong choice. "A guy like your character, who doesn't love anybody," she replies, "isn't very sympathetic, you know." Claudia believes that Guido's tragic flaw is his lack of faith in love, and indeed, this is part of why he is ultimately unable to finish a film about his personal relationships. In the last moments of the film, however, Guido is rescued by a realization that to be alive is to accept oneself as imperfect, and he asks Luisa to accept his flaws. What follows is a celebration of the beauty that lies in that imperfection, but it appears to be yet another of Guido's fantasies, making it unclear whether the people in his life will ever truly accept his flaws. Guido's ultimate realization, therefore, is at once naive, since he expects his relationships to mend without any true change on his part, and realistic, since he understands that any attempt to reform himself would fail. Much like the absurdist tone of the band's procession, Guido's story ends on an ambiguous note somewhere between damnation and redemption.

What is 8 1/2's ultimate treatment of authenticity and artifice as it relates to artistic expression?

Guido's overarching goal in making his film is to eliminate artifice and lies from his filmmaking. Ironically, the film seems like quite a production; it involves an enormous set built in an open field, as well as a crew working around the clock on costumes and casting. Furthermore, it is an elaborate science fiction film about an escape from a doomed planet Earth—no simple endeavor. Even so, Guido fixates on purity and authenticity in the abstract, chiefly through the figure of Claudia, who he sees as a symbol of purity and virtue. The spa at which Guido takes time off from the film is a literal source of purity, as well, since it prescribes holy water for its patients, a kind of physical baptism. White also functions as a symbol of purity and authenticity in Guido's fantasies and dreams, which often include people dressed in white costumes whom we never see wearing white in reality; these images usually function as more ideal, perfect versions of the real characters.

One by one, however, Guido becomes exasperated with each of his supposed bastions of perfection or purity, and loses faith in his ability to create art at all. Consoling his partner, Daumier applies Guido's ideal of purity and truth to artistic expression, arguing for a sterile artistic landscape in which only perfect art survives. However, Guido later realizes he must embrace his imperfect, messy life, which builds into a musical tribute to his personal journey and the people who have been part of it. This seems to argue for a vision of art as meaningful even in its artifice, celebratory even in its selfishness. Just like life, Fellini seems to say, art is beautiful even in its imperfection.

What is the film's ultimate treatment of women? What is Guido's?

Guido often appears to be a chauvinistic character, as he often considers women on an archetypal level, rather than a human one. This is apparent from the start of the film, since we learn early that he is cheating on his wife with Carla, a sexy bombshell to whom he is addicted even as he believes she is silly. He also fantasizes constantly about a mysterious woman dressed in white, whom we later realize is Claudia, Guido's vision of the ideal, pure woman. These women, and many more, populate Guido's fantasies, particularly the one in which he imagines he is being pleasured by an entire harem of women. Here, he banishes a showgirl to an attic because she is getting too old to pleasure him and imagines his wife cleaning up after his hoard of sex slaves—in many ways, the ultimate chauvinist.

However, even in this fantasy, over which Guido should have a measure of control, certain more complicated women escape his objectification as sources of pleasure or servants; these include Gloria and Rossella. Even in Guido's real life, Gloria escapes objectification by controlling her own destiny and asserting her intelligence; she is writing a doctoral thesis on the solitude of man in contemporary theater, she informs him, and she unapologetically leads Mario around by the nose. Rossella, too, is a mere spectator in Guido's harem fantasy, not a participant, addressing Guido in the same way she would in real life. Outside his fantasy, even perfect Claudia later emerges as a more complicated woman, which admittedly persuades Guido to lose interest in her.

Ultimately, Guido's realization that he and Luisa must accept his flaws in order to enjoy life is a somewhat selfish one, as we must assume that he includes his infidelity in the list of his own imperfections. Even so, the final march of people from Guido's past and present emerges as a humanist celebration of people themselves as complex, nuanced individuals partaking in a whole. Indeed, Fellini celebrates his numerous female characters as equally nuanced people, as morally complicated—and often as strong as, or stronger than—Guido.

Does our access to Guido's memories, fantasies, and dreams bring us, as viewers, closer to Guido? How does this inform or contradict critiques of Guido's film as too personal?

As viewers, we receive access to Guido's subconscious and conscious life. Consequently, we are able to consider his real-life journey in the context of his childhood memories, dreams, and fantasies, and the ways in which those bleed into his waking life. Ultimately, this makes Guido a relatable character, since we are able to consider his flaws as the product of his past, circumstances, and imagination, just as we consider our own present-tense actions through the lens of our upbringing, mood, and environment. Although we may not relate to Guido's juvenile indiscretions (sneaking off to watch Seraghina dance) or chauvinistic impulses (fantasizing about a harem of women), for example, we do relate to temptation; although we may never have dreamt about our deceased parents, we can relate to themes of mortality and lineage. On these universal, human levels, Fellini's audience relates to Guido.

Because we relate to Guido, Fellini also asks us to question the critiques of Guido's film as too personal that we see invoked throughout 8 1/2. Luisa and her friends object to Guido's decision to base his film on real-life, personal interactions. Daumier, Guido's producer, and several reporters likewise criticize Guido for assuming that his own memories and relationships are of interest to filmgoers. Because this is exactly what Fellini does by inviting us to watch 8 1/2, he dares us to decide for ourselves whether personal experience may ultimately be made interesting to the viewer; the test is the very film that we watch.

How does the tone of 8 1/2 inform its themes of mortality?

While shooting 8 1/2, Fellini affixed a sign to his camera that said "Remember, this is a comedy," and it is perhaps because of this that 8 1/2's tone and mood is neither consistent nor easily pinned down from scene to scene (Kezich 234). While the film certainly traffics in an absurdist tone, this feeling modulates across scenes. For example, we feel the absurd, even circus-like quality of the scene in which Guido gives a press conference for his film, since the reporter characters are often framed so as to crop out their bodies, lending them a laughably literal "talking head" quality. In other scenes, however, a more palpably somber tone is at work. This is true in Guido's dream of his deceased father, for example. In still other scenes, such as Guido's opening dream that he is trapped inside a car stuck in traffic, the tone is palpably surreal. Mirroring Guido's messy, Frankensteinian film, these wildly varying tones make for an ambiguous, omnibus tone across the film as a whole. In the final sequence, wherein Guido invites all the people from his past and present to dance in a circle to celebrate his imperfect life, we feel all the film's tones collide, the result of which feels final, macroscopic, and climactic. As such, this scene feels like an ode to both Guido's life and his death, perhaps speaking to the complexity of tone—at once absurd and somber, surreal and comic—that surrounds death itself.