Amarcord

Oh, Friday nights, when I'd rather be drinking wine, watching Kitchen Nightmares, Fringe, or screwing around on my phone. Instead, I sat down and watched Amarcord, directed by Federico Fellini in 1973. It's a good movie...I wasn't astonished by it, but I was also really scatterbrained when watching it. A day full of bad moods will do that to you. I really enjoyed it, though. I liked how even though there were so many characters, you felt really connected to them. The movie is really funny at parts, also, which helped to make you feel closer to the characters.  

It's about a small coastal village in Italy,and the film follows the lives of the people who live in it over the course of a year. It's sort of like watching a creative memoir, if you read those, like I do. The film is supposed to be a bit of an autobiography about Fellini, but he takes many creative liberties and definitely makes the film feel larger than life. I pretty much only read horrible memoirs and other stupid non-fiction books, so I really liked that aspect of the film. It made it more fun to watch. Ebert mentions that the cast is so colorful in different shapes, sizes, and appearances that it almost feels like a Todd Browning movie (think Freaks). I loved that there were so many different types of people - it made the village really come to life. People aren't all one size or anything like that, so it makes no sense for them to be that way in films. 

I really could notice Fellini's style more now, in this film. Not that I didn't in others, it's just that I have seen a few of his films and finally understand what his style looks like. I could see a lot of similar imagergy and characters, and the musical style really was similar as well. I remember I wrote a a bit about how he likes to use circus music and imagery, which I thought was  bit present in this film as well. I felt a bit proud of myself that I could detect a bit more about his style than I could before.

To be honest, I have a really bad migraine (I'm like a barometer, whenever it's rainy I get a bad headache), and I'm a bit out of it. I think I'm just going to cut this post short instead of embarrass myself with rambling. Sorry, please forgive me, haha! It's a great film that's streaming on Netflix right now, full of great, lively characters and wonderful cinematography. Its a fun movie to watch and worth checking out. Let me know if you see it!

Links:
Ebert's Great Movie Essay on Amarcord