8 & a Little More Than Half

I've had a really sort of unfair prejudice against old Italian films for quite a while, which I've been trying to get over. I think it all started with 8 1/2, which I saw in high school at the Underground Film Organization screening. (dude, what awesome shirts we had....) I don't think a group high school setting is the best to try and receive that film. I decided to give it another chance a couple days ago, and it was actually really enjoyable. It did help that I understood a lot of the Italian under the subtitles and I watched the intro by Terry Gilliam, with whom I am in love...and he persuaded me to like it. I never noticed, but he does emulate scenes from that film a LOT.

Brazil, the guy flying with a chain bolting him to the ground? Hmmm....

The thing is, Gilliam's film is so much more colorful and easily engaging to me, being a product of the technicolor culture that raised me. Brazil is one of my favorite movies. Oh shit, I didn't even notice this, but an alternate title for it is "1984 and 1/2" Dur.
Actually, I'd just like to take a moment to acknowledge how incredible that movie is. I was always in love with it for its great visual imagery and that wonderful fantastical metaphor running through the whole thing. Also, the ducts. I think Gilliam has a real knack for pinpointing everything that's already a bit grotesque or suppressive in our society and blowing it up into a gruesome picture that is awful but undeniably right on the mark, and also sort of evilly funny.
Not only that, but it's full of all kinds of secret messages to people who are looking, like the almost exact recreation of the Odessa Steps sequence from Battleship Potemkin with a vacuum cleaner and that lady being shot in the eye.

AAAHHHH soooo cool.

But anyway, 8 1/2 addressed a lot of things that interest me a lot about films and filmmaking. It's very self-aware, and while I used to complain about its pretentiousness, I now feel really really dumb because of course that's the fucking point. But then, isn't every film just a little pretentious even in that it is being made because people expect you want to see it? Anyway, this particular film went way more in depth into that exploration of creation and the links it has to human experience and memory. It's actually a little scary almost, how you can become the films you make. Or is it vice-versa?
Anyway, if one evening you're feeling very patient and a bit existential, run on down to I Luv and GET THAT SHIT. You'll feel infinitely smarter after having watched it and paid attention. Yeah, you can sort of tune out for the last like ten minutes of people dancing around in a circle. Italians like their films long and long. LLoooooooooonnng. But not as long as Berlin Alexanderplatz.