8 ½

This post modernist film presented a director’s insight and viewpoint into the process of filmmaking. When comparing this film to the same theme highlighted in Truffaut’s work that was screened in the beginning of the year, the two films differ greatly in many ways. After watching 8 ½ in its entirety, it was not immediately obvious what was going on in the film because of the discontinuity that displaced the narrative. In some ways, this characteristic deterred the quality of the film for me because I often found myself feeling frustrated and confused , which inhibited by ability to thoroughly enjoy the film as a whole. Unlike Truffaut’s La Nuit Americaine, in 8 ½ it was extremely arduous to differentiate between the two films within the film. In hindsight, although at first I saw this observation as being a destructive trait about the film, looking back it adds to the theme of the protagonists inability to distinguish his personal reality and his desires as well as his reality from his work. Overall, I think watching this film a second or third time would greatly benefit my understanding and appreciation of the piece.