This is one of those projects that when you consider each piece, you know it is a mess, essentially worthless. The story is alarmingly close to an afterschool morality play. The style is deliberately confusing if you know the filmmaker and the neorealist dogma of his work and others of the school. The camera is kept in a fixed location, often stationary, and though there are some special effects, the cinematography is less than ordinary. The acting and presentation is after the style of silent films. The thing has little coherence and is comically episodic. There is an offensively artificial sweetness to it.
Yet, when you put it all together, it works well enough for you to not be annoyed by it. And that's pretty remarkable because the coherence is in the parts, not within any part (like story) which is of less importance than the whole. This story actually seems intent on destroying the relevance of story. A statue comes alive; a mother's love is unfinished; characters in a shantytown become visible and not. A magical power alters much of what matters, but with no causal result. Oil is discovered, but no one cares.
Yet it works. As a historical artifact, it matters because it seems to have released the Italians from the dreadful rut they were in and allowed Fellini to do his turn at magical narrative folding. Other than that, I cannot recommend it but for the experience of seeing the value of imagining each bit with the same character and having the film work just on that coherence.
Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.
Yet, when you put it all together, it works well enough for you to not be annoyed by it. And that's pretty remarkable because the coherence is in the parts, not within any part (like story) which is of less importance than the whole. This story actually seems intent on destroying the relevance of story. A statue comes alive; a mother's love is unfinished; characters in a shantytown become visible and not. A magical power alters much of what matters, but with no causal result. Oil is discovered, but no one cares.
Yet it works. As a historical artifact, it matters because it seems to have released the Italians from the dreadful rut they were in and allowed Fellini to do his turn at magical narrative folding. Other than that, I cannot recommend it but for the experience of seeing the value of imagining each bit with the same character and having the film work just on that coherence.
Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.