Cinema
The nature of cinema itself dominates 8 1/2, since the film is largely structured around Guido's loss of faith in his creative voice. Throughout the film, people offer unsolicited advice on cinema's role in the world. The first to do so is the writer, Daumier, who boldly states that cinema lags behind all other artistic mediums by 50 years. Later in the film, a clergyman tells Guido that cinema has the ability to "educate or corrupt millions of souls." Even characters to whom we are only briefly introduced mercilessly probe Guido on the topic of art and life; this reaches its climax at the press conference, where reporters harass Guido, asking him everything from "Are you afraid of the atomic bomb?" to "Do you really think your life can be of interest to others?" Throughout the film, Guido remains silent on the topic of cinema, with the exception of his conversation with Claudia, to whom he confesses he just wants to make an "honest film." Authenticity, then, emerges as the ultimate goal of cinema, as opposed to pure artifice or pure memoir. This underlies Guido's final monologue in the film, wherein he realizes, "now everything’s all confused again, like it was before. But this confusion is me as I am, not as I’d like to be."
Fellini plays with the question of cinema's purpose formally, as well, particularly by using his own camera to investigate Guido's emotional journey through his dreams and fantasies. Often, when we enter Guido's dreams or fantasies, the camera guides us in such a way that the fantasy initially appears to be real, without the conventional dissolves or other filmic editing tricks. For example, when Guido imagines Luisa and Carla becoming friends, Fellini cuts directly from reality (Guido smiling at Carla) to fantasy (Carla singing) so that it is unclear at first whether we are being told the truth or lied to. This creates an explicit tension between the personal and the artificial, as they are blended together in one deft cut. Such formal choices constitute Fellini's formal meta-interrogation of cinema's ability to lie and tell the truth.
Purity
Purity, particularly as an analog to the notion of truth, is a strong theme throughout 8 1/2. For starters, we meet Guido at a spa whose water supposedly purifies one's system regardless of the specific ill with which it is plagued. Throughout the film, water and the color white stand in as visual representations of purity; this is at work in the spa, which is built from white stone and tended by nurses clothed in white. This is also where we meet Claudia, Guido's ideal woman (who likewise wears white), in one of Guido's fantasies. Later on in the film, Guido explicitly calls Claudia a "symbol of purity and spontaneity," but when we meet her in person, she wears black and pokes holes in Guido's ideas about love and truth. This is one of many ways in which Fellini complicates the notion of pure or objective truth; when supposedly angelic Claudia tells him he's an unsympathetic character, for example, he realizes she isn't his ideal woman, saying, "You're a pain like the others." Even the spa water, supposedly pure and healthy, makes Carla sick. Contrastingly, even Seraghina, supposedly the devil, lives by the sea. Using white and water as empty symbols of false purity, Fellini sets up his audience for Guido's final realization: that he must embrace the messiness of his life and cease to pursue perfection.
Realism
Authenticity and realism, especially as they relate to filmmaking, are the abstract ideals to which Guido aspires, yet he is unable to master them. He explicitly mentions this when in the car with Claudia, to whom he confesses he just wants to make an honest movie; her part in the film, he explains, will be "both young and ancient, a child yet already a woman, authentic and radiant." In moments like this, it seems like Guido has a clear vision for the film as one of realism and honesty. Later in the scene, however, he admits that there is neither a part for Claudia nor a film to be made, and we see that his endeavor to make an honest film (in response, of course, to accusations from his wife and friends that he is a liar) is a sham. Throughout, the question of what genre of film Guido is making is a salient one; in the same breath, various acquaintances and critics ask him if he's capable of making a film about love yet beg him to stop making films about his personal life. Late in the film, we find out he's making a science fiction movie about an escape from Earth after thermonuclear war, a premise that seems steeped in artifice and surrealism.
This desire for realism functions not merely as a genre of film but also as a yardstick for the women with whom Guido interacts, many of whom constitute absurd archetypes for femininity. Carla is silly and cartoonish in her bombshell aesthetic, and Claudia manifests chiefly in Guido's imagination as his ideal woman, unrealistic in her virtue. Of course, these feminine archetypes reach their climax in Guido's harem fantasy, which is complete with an aging can-can dancer and a Danish stewardess, neither of which are realistic, but rather childish images of femininity. Ultimately, even as her authenticity is complicated by her onscreen portrayal (especially during Guido's screen tests), Luisa is the most "realistic" of all the women in Guido's life, and consequently, he reaffirms his commitment to her.
Dreams and Fantasies
Fellini's 8 1/2 is as much about cinema and art as it is about dreams and fantasies. Our introduction to the film is through one of Guido's dreams, in which he escapes from a suffocating traffic jam and flies away but eventually crashes down to earth—a fitting metaphor for the ups and downs of his creative ambitions. Indeed, to the extent that the film is structured at all, it is structured by the fluid transition from reality to Guido's subconscious. For example, when Guido chats with a clergyman at the spa, he sees a plump woman on a nearby hill, prompting a recollection of Seraghina, which we see after a hard cut and with virtually no indication that what follows is a memory. By blending reality, dream, and even fantasy so fluidly, Fellini asks us to assign them the same value in understanding Guido's character. Just as we see him form an endearing bond with Seraghina, who is otherwise a pariah, we also see him indulge in a chauvinistic fantasy in which his wife toils away while he is pleasured by a whole harem of women. Guido, in short, is complicated, and dreams or fantasies are the primary way in which we access the boundary between his meek public self and his complicated private self. This sets up the audience for Guido's ultimate realization that he must embrace the chaos that is his selfhood, represented by the film's final fantasy sequence. There, Guido's reality, dreams, and fantasies collide on a single stage, offering a surreal, even macabre vision of what it is to accept oneself.
Mortality
Guido's fear of mortality is a theme that haunts both his dreams and his waking life. In the film's very first sequence, for example, Guido escapes from a smoking car and crashes to the ground from a great height. In his next dream, he chats with his dead father about his tomb and later helps lower his father into a freshly dug grave. Even Guido's overarching goal—to make an honest movie for the first time—characterizes him as a character in search of legitimate achievement before he dies. This anxiety about aging is clearly present in his escapades with women, both real and fantastical, since nearly all of his mistresses (Carla, Claudia, the Danish stewardess) are younger than his wife, Luisa. This is notably untrue of Jacqueline Bonbon, the showgirl who Guido orders to retire from pleasing him in his fantasy. Her retirement eventually galvanizes a rebellion amongst the girls in Guido's fantastical harem, since they believe it is unfair that Guido is much older than them yet passes judgement on their age. Real-life Claudia likewise calls Guido an "old man" near the end of the film, confirming his worst fear. Ultimately, Guido seems to accept his own aging and death, just as he accepts the reality of his imperfect life. Indeed, the final sequence of the film, in which everyone from Guido's past and present march together in a circle, seems to gesture at the circle of life that will eventually call for Guido's death. The final shot of the film, wherein a little boy is left alone in the dark, likewise seems to symbolize the fact that even the little boy that we've watched grow into an old man (Guido) will someday die.
Memory
Memory is integral to the way in which Guido relates to his past through dreams, fantasies, and real life. It is notable that all of Guido's dreams and fantasies are populated by real people from his past and present; even Claudia, to whom we are introduced in several of Guido's fantasies (in which she is nameless), is eventually revealed to be a woman from Guido's past. As Guido navigates the production of the film he'll never make, he is often haunted by his past, and memories are often juxtaposed with reality much like dreams are in the film. For example, when Guido chats with the clergymen at the spa, he is reminded of his childhood encounters with Seraghina, triggering a lengthy remembrance of the Catholic punishment he received as a result. In episodes like this, it is evident that the past is never truly dead for Guido, but rather fluidly woven into his present, and even into his dreams. Guido's memory of his father, for example, appears in a dream, wherein his father coexists with the living (Guido's mother and Luisa). This melding of memory with present experience culminates in the film's final sequence, in which everyone from Guido's past and present join together for a celebration of Guido's life. This viscerally embodies the fusion of Guido's past with his present, as both are represented equally in this morbidly absurd circus.
Religion
Guido's complicated relationship to religion is evident throughout 8 1/2, since it is one of the primary ways in which Guido attempts to find meaning and authenticity in preparation for his film. Even the spa at which we meet Guido is a religious domain; before we even see Guido's face, we hear a doctor prescribe him a dose of holy water to drink every hour. He also visits the local clergy in the guise of doing research for his film, instead using these interviews to seek advice on his own artistic and personal life. In the first of these visits with the local cardinal, Guido lapses into a memory of Seraghina, a seaside prostitute that he visited as a child. Through this memory, we see that Guido was caught with Seraghina and subsequently punished by the church in ways that seem severe given the innocent nature of the childhood indiscretion. Even so, Guido probes—and is probed by—the cardinal and other members of the clergy in two separate meetings. In one of these meetings, a priest essentially tells Guido he doesn't believe cinema as a medium is fit to represent divine love.
All this contributes to Guido's growing confusion about the role of cinema and art, a frustration that he only reconciles when he realizes that he must embrace the messiness of his life and its flaws. Ultimately, this conclusion seems rather Catholic in nature, since it emphasizes the inevitability of sin. The finale of the film seems to lend itself to this reading, since the image of Guido's friends and family marching, dressed in white, in a circle to celebrate his life seems almost funereal in nature and perhaps even gestures at the ascent to heaven that we see Guido nearly achieve in his opening dream sequence.
