Asa Nisi Masa

"Accept me as I am. Only then can we discover each other."

Fellini has made a film about a fictional director who is attempting to make a seemingly impossible film that can be both fresh and honest. What 8 1/2's fictional director, Guido Anselmi, doesn't realize is that he himself is the protagonist of a film that is just what he sets out to direct. And regardless of whom Guido Anselmi is based on, that parallel is not of adamant relevance. What is of important note, for me, is an artist's selfish need to confess through expression. To be pure to oneself and not compromise, even if your artistic disclosure isn't limited, personally, to you as the only strict subject. You're not only confessing yourself but the honest, uncompromised truths of others through association. Should this matter to art? Art's function, is it not to express, before and above all else? The artist's work isn't inspired to make friends (or enemies for that matter), its not for scandal or reputation (though it may very well seem like); Art is simply in the business of creating and destroying. Its not a matter of one or the other, it is in fact, a fact of both. Art creates and destroys, the flux from one side to the other, distributed howsoever the perspective of the viewer is inclined to receive it, this is Art.

"Of any artist truly worth the name we should ask nothing except this act of faith: to learn silence."

Fellini has made a very creative and destructive film with much success to, at the very least, what Guido Anselmi wished to accomplish. Guido within such a film however, met a different success than his invisible director. Its also a case of honesty and truth when an artist must accept the end. To force something out with no intention other than to stubbornly glorify oneself in the name of commitment alone; ladies and gentleman, here is vanity. When Guido finally stops pursuing his vision through means that could not properly express that vision, having realized this, it was with the same honesty and truth he gripped as weapons that he healed himself when those weapons were used instead, as gauze.