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Watching a Fellini film, I’ve always gotten the feeling that he’s in
on some kind of private joke that he’s not telling us. It’s
as if, behind all the surreal pageantry, behind that method
of making the personal universal by giving it an epic context,
he’s hiding the punchline in plain sight. And his films all
seem to know that we’ll never quite figure it out.
I got the same feeling listening to him speak in Fellini:
I’m A Born Liar. You never hear the questions asked of
him, only his answers, and this gives the impression that
he’s on his own time, that he’s holding back something because
he can, that he’s in total control, guiding the information
where he wants it to go. Much like his films, Fellini speaks
in circles, at tremendous length, saying very little even
as he talks continuously. Sometimes you find yourself wanting
him to pick a point and go with it, to just concretely outline
his reasoning. Then you find yourself saying “Aha!” as you
realize that his long-windedness is making a cracked kind
of sense: This documentary may very well be continuing his
tradition of concealing the secrets his films always have.
This is a documentary with the apparent purpose of giving
insight into his creative process, but it ends up serving
as a combination of cinematic retrospective and the cryptic
swansong of one of the greatest film directors of all time.
This isn’t to say that no information can be gleaned from
the film. While there are no real revelations, no scandalous
surprises, Liar does a terrific job of explaining where
Fellini was coming from, how his own personal beliefs and
experiences shaped the stories he put on screen. This information
is probably the most valuable material to come from the film,
if only in that it sates the art lover’s curiosity about inspiration
and perspective. Fellini’s wisdom comes from very simple places,
places fueled by observation and especially by his own instincts,
which seem unique but are actually, Fellini admits, quite
ordinary. There’s still a lot to learn, though. For example:
- On the subject of art, Fellini insists that it must be
vital. It must challenge us to think about life, and therefore
give life the weightiness it deserves. Without art, he says,
life would be stripped down to its basic biological functionality,
a clinically scientific outlook with no room for interpretation
or rebelliousness. And rebellion, he says, is the most essential
aspect of the artist. One needs an authority to clash with,
to offend, so that the art may be powerful enough so that
“All of life can be suggested to a lifeless creature that
wants to live.”
- Women, he says, are a bedrock for the male species. Men
project expectations on women in order to alleviate their
own fears, hoping for a message that can make everything
make sense.
- He proclaims his fascination with art to be founded in
the excessive character of the artist, how artists are often
considered to be “scoundrels,” but never have to meet with
repercussions.
- The title of the documentary refers to a comment Fellini
makes about his preference for the constructed reality of
his films over their real-life counterparts. To him, what
he has invented is infinitely more real than anything life
has brought him. The documentary emphasizes this by intercutting
the talking heads with both static and panning shots of
the sets of his films, and of scenes from his films, very
rarely stepping out of the construction to acknowledge the
artifice by showing the actual filmmaking process.
Liar doesn’t serve as merely a lecture from Fellini,
though. As luck would have it, many of Fellini’s collaborators
were still alive to shoot interviews, and the portraits drawn
of the man tell fascinating, conflicting stories about working
with him. Donald Sutherland, who starred in Casanova,
has the most negative things to say, claiming that Fellini’s
directorial method consisted of a marionette mentality, with
Fellini the grand master and the actors unwilling puppets.
He asserts that Fellini was always terrified of his own superficiality
and used filmmaking as a way to channel those fears into profound
displays of value.
Terence Stamp,one of the stars of Spirits Of The
Dead, Fellini’s first collaboration with English actors,
paints a decidedly different but no less demonized picture
of Fellini’s interaction with his actors, stating that Fellini
was too hands-off, that to get direction, you had to demand
it, and then you might only get a vague run-down of the script,
but absolutely none of the motivation that Stamp insists English
actoront-family:Verdana'>Despite the conflicting depictions
Fellini’s collaborators throw around, what comes shining through
in each interview is their respect for the man’s vision. Fellini
claims never to have pretended that filmmaking wasn’t a selfish
act for him. For him, creating was a narcissistic enterprise—he
got to play God. Unable to cope with a normal existence, he
turned to film as a way to direct himself, and in the process,
fashion his own survival. Authorship sustained him, and it
shows in his films. At one of the few points of the documentary
to actually show Fellini directing, we see him flitting around
a scene setup for Satyricon. Since Fellini often chose
to film scenes without dialogue and later dub them (the reason
why, in may of his films, the dialogue never syncs up with
the actors’ lips), he is able to direct the scene verbally,
standing just on the edge and telling his actors exactly where
to look and how to react to each other. If ever there was
a need for evidence of Fellini’s authorship of his films,
it’s this moment, which illustrates the organization behind
the perceived lack of structure in his films.
The lack of structure, in fact, may be what makes his films
so rich. Not so for this documentary. Director Damian Pettigrew
fails to give his film any kind of actual composition. It’s
as if he just filmed his interviews and then stuck them together
without any regard as to how they might fit best. This sort
of thing may very well work within a surreal narrative such
as Fellini’s. For a nonfiction film, on the other hand, that
doesn’t work. While the film does sometimes summon the mood
that a Fellini movie might, the effort is too visible, too
obvious, to make it as effective as Pettigrew seems to think
it is.
This extends to many of the interviews. The way the speakers
are filmed sometimes comes off as forced and arty. One of
the interviews in particular, which captures the speaker in
profiled silhouette with the reflection of light through his
glasses bouncing off the backdrop and looking like a kind
of laser guiding his vision, is so self-consciously composed
as to cause distraction. It just doesn’t work. The staginess
of these interviews emphasizes what comes off as artificiality
in the film, as if the whole thing is some kind of joke, a
put-on play that thinks it’s fooling you into believing it,
and is laughing at your gullibility.
Of course, this goes back to Fellini’s assertion that he
is just a big liar. Maybe this film is some last-ditch
effort to fool the audience. And while we should consider
just how insulting that idea may be, the fact remains: Even
lies can be interesting.
—Cole Sowell
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