Inner Landscape and Fellini’s 8 1/2

By Ohary Ahedo 

What is the Surreal? It eludes definition, escaping confinement of any singular medium. The Surreal breathes like the trees and manifests its essence in an inherently organic manner. Unquestionably, the Surreal has lingered within the depths of the human soul, its presence evolving and adapting to the shifting tides of time. Surrealist movements have unfurled their tendrils, emerging either before or amidst the tumultuous throes of crises within their respective mediums. 

In cinema, we can trace this period beginning with Luis Buñuel and culminating in the works of David Lynch. Works such as El Ángel Exterminador, 8½, and Anémic Cinéma epitomize the first and second waves of Surrealist cinema, collectively what is the Inner Landscape. Among these cinematic gems, Federico Fellini’s 8½ stands as a paragon of this ethereal realm. In this work, Fellini skillfully navigates the oneiric. 8½ encapsulates the essence of surrealism in its purest form, an unadulterated revelation of the “Inner Landscape” within the cinematic realm. 

A plethora of words has sought to capture the essence of the iconic film, with some even drawing parallels to the avant-garde currents of the Dadaist movement. The Inner Landscape can be identified with the concept of magical idealism as expounded by German poets such as Hölderlin and Novalis. Within the whole of 8½, the significance of magical idealism becomes paramount, shaping the lens through which we perceive and decipher its craftsmanship. In this work, Fellini melds his thymos with the logos of a Dadaist, creating a cinematic experience

characterized by dreamlike sequences and a temporal distortion that only the director himself could truly comprehend. 8 ½ thus becomes an Inner Landscape and can be seen as a personal project. The theory is further supported by the content of the film and its story of a famed film director facing ‘Director’s Block.’ 

There is great conflict within critical circles when it comes to judging the contents of Fellini’s film. Some describe it as a man’s procrastination drowning himself in lust, and others put it through a political lens, arguing it is about post-war Italy and critique of materialist totalitarianism. All of these interpretations of the film clash with one another and ultimately make it difficult to find a sentient truth in the film. In this manner, we are forced to overlook that 8 ½ is a work of negation. In The Path Of Cinnabar, esotericist and former Dada painter, Julius Evola says, “The most distinctive trait of Dadaism was its downplaying of all similar negations, which it sought to deprive of any pathos by turning itself into forms of stark paradox and pure contradiction” (Evola 19-20). This minute description of what Dada meant in its short-lived popularity is a guiding line to the principles of what the Surreal is. 

In the film’s introductory sequence, we find ourselves in one of the fantasies of the protagonist, Guido. He sits stuck in traffic locked inside of his car with wandering eyes, trying to escape. Fellini’s exquisite use of imagery is apparent in this scene where you can view the vehicles as products of the Industrial Age. The protagonist makes his way out of the car and floats dreamily above them. He is later found flying in Fellini’s personal heaven, his Inner Landscape. It is at the end of this sequence that Guido is brought back down to Earth and awakens from what was a dream. This is the typical language used in this opposite of the neorealist movements in Italy at the time. Neorealism followed a certain rationality that disappeared altogether in the middle of the 1950s, also known as the Golden Age. The neorealist

movements spawned works that were all too familiar to one another and promoted a perverse humanism akin to that of the Italian Renaissance in earlier times, only for humanism to be pulled away in exchange for a more spiritual era of film. Within those first four minutes of 8 ½ , we encounter two of the four metaphysical principles in magical idealism, a distortion of matter and mind and absolute freedom. 

Fellini distorts both matter and mind within the form of a dream sequence. In still images like paintings, this sort of distortion was known and venerated at the time. However, it was not seen before in movement. As Dadaist Tristan Tzara explicitly put it in his 1918 manifesto, “It is only contrast that leads us to the past” (Tzara 7). In various scenes throughout the film, we see this oscillation between fantasy and reality in a way that lets us feel as if we are being caught in the dream of the other. An hour into the film, Guido returns to a time in his youth and watches a hulkish woman, Saranghina, dance on the beach. He is transported to this moment spontaneously whilst in conversation with a cardinal seeking approval for his script. Returning back to the present, the first words spoken are, “So, what does it mean” 

Subsequent pieces have arisen since the beginning of what could be considered Fellini’s masterpiece: Wings Of Desire, Mirror, The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie, and David Lynch’s Hollywood-set films. Whether it be Fellini’s plotlines, memorable protagonists, or his fantasy sequences. Fellini was like a prophet to film with his work, allowing one to bear witness to the beauty of the Inner Landscape in film, though the form has decayed in recent years. There have been several pieces of what many may consider the avant-garde or surreal solely because of a replication of what many call style. But as Landscapes, the avant-garde and the surreal do not have style, rather they have soul.

In the unfolding of moving images and Inner Landscapes, there exists an occasional fixation on the individual, yet the concepts enshrined within possess the capacity to transcend into the supra-individual realm. To return to Evola “[Dadaism] signaled the self-dissolution of art into a higher level of freedom” (20-21). The potency inherent in film is frequently neglected and underutilized, often subjected to a regrettable simplification. This, however, constitutes a profound misstep. Each noteworthy work of art demands a cognitive exertion for comprehension This effort becomes the crucible enabling us to delve inward, unveiling the canvas of our pristine, untainted landscapes.

Works Cited 

Julius Evola, The Path of Cinnabar, Integral Tradition Publishing, 2009 Tzara, Tristan. Seven Dada Manifestos and Lampisteries. Calder, 1977.