Review of La Dolce Vita (1960) by Ronald S — 05 Aug 2010
Watching Fellini's La Dolce Vita conjured a variety of associations in my mind: the Lost generation novels of Ftizgerald and Hemingway (The Great Gatsby, Tender is the Night, The Sun Also Rises, and A Moveable Feast in particular), the novels of Jack Kerouac, D.
A. Pennebaker's documentary of Dylan's 1965 tour of England entitled Don't Look Back, and Michelangelo Antonioni's early 60s trilogy of films (L'avventura, La Notte, and L'eclisse).
Like those texts, La Dolce Vita is an exploration of a class of people seeking pleasure but never finding it, a class incapable of recognizing that their overstimulated lifestyles leads to the overwhelming sense of ennui and meaninglessness that pervades their lives.
La Dolce Vita concerns an intellectual gossip paper writer with novelist ambitions and a suicidally jealous girlfriend. He has a variety of lovers and female celebrity acquaintances with whom he flirts and flits about Rome.
As he moves from one extravagant part to another, his sense of identity slowly erodes--be becomes incapable of understanding his self or any sense of meaning or ethics. Fellini's film is a sprawling exploration of celebrity and the cult of personality that surrounds it in the media, but it is also a poignant interrogation of identity in the media age.
We live the beautiful life, but is there anything ultimately at its center?
This review of La Dolce Vita (1960) was written by Ronald S on 05 Aug 2010.
La Dolce Vita has generally received very positive reviews.
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