To describe Fellini’s 8½ as a confusing piece of surrealism would perhaps undermine its reputation as a masterpiece of Italian cinema. However, the array of violently incohesive images in the opening sequence of the film had me puzzled as to what the plot would entail. The premise of 8½ is not inherently strange, yet there is something to be said of how Fellini reflects the psyche of a stagnant, middle aged film director through an obscure and multi-faceted plot.
The film opens without sound. The protagonist, Guido (Marcello Mastroianni), is stuck in a claustrophobic traffic jam. The black and white cinematography seems to heighten the sensory appeal of the scene, and yet it appears as if nothing moves and nothing will happen. As the camera pans across rows and rows of identical cars, it pauses on individual faces. A man sits grumpily in the backseat of his car, a woman in the front. A row of hands dangle absently from the windows of a bus. Guido bangs hysterically on the windows of his car, desperately trying to escape. The car fills with smoke. Blank faces stare at him helplessly. Guido clambers out of the car roof; white light overwhelms the screen. Guido hovers and flies into the distance, drifting through the clouds before being, quite literally, tethered back to earth. Fellini was forty-three when he made 8½, and intended for it to be an honest reflection on his stagnated creativity as an ageing film director. His baroque, earthy style is confusing for the unknowing audience. Yet this is the sensation Fellini sought to project, one of uncertainty and inaction. The mind of an aimless film director experiencing a creative hiatus is portrayed through Guido as well as the muted cinematography and surrealism of the story. An air of foggy perplexity prevails, extending Guido’s own psychological condition to the mind of the viewer themselves.
Fellini’s writing exudes a sense of Freudian psyche, filling 8½ with an unrestrained subconscious which leaves the audience to piece together the significance of the dream-like images themselves. Played with a deep sensitivity by Mastroianni, Guido’s recurring vision of his ideal woman causes him to spiral into a series of bad relationships. He is estranged from his wife, he is distant from his mistress, and he fools himself into thinking that he has found salvation in an actress, Claudia. All these women seem to fall under the shadow of a potent yet somewhat displaced figure, Saraghina. In flashbacks to his youth, Guido remembers a group of children running to the beach to visit Saraghina. Uncertain as to who exactly Saraghina is, I watched as a large buxom woman with wild black hair and a tight black dress emerged out of a hut. The children all chant in unison “Saraghina! Saraghina! La rumba!” as Saraghina prowls towards them, bares her shoulders, and begins to prance across the sand. An unsettling unfamiliarity comes over both the audience and perhaps the character of young Guido himself, as if this strange figure skews the narrative off its predicted trajectory. Saraghina is a fabrication of Guido’s sexuality and imagination, as her dwelling place is on the cusp between fluid imagination and concrete reality.
Guido’s flashbacks to childhood provide moments of clarity; they are digressions which help to elucidate the central plot. When magicians read Guido’s mind and reveal the words “asa nisi masa”, this nonsensical phrase is explained by the shadowy, baroque image of Guido as a child, being put to bed by a crowd of women. The scene grows dark, and another child repeats “asa nisi masa” to make the eyes of a portrait move. This memory, which connects Guido’s past and present, demonstrates his profound desire to be cared for by a woman. Later in the film, when Guido envisions himself surrounded by women in a harem, he again regresses to a child-like state, doted on and cared for by women. Yet it is his wife, Luisa, who is the only constant, realistic female figure in Guido’s life. Despite being cold and distant, she is the figure of reality that grounds Guido as he deceives himself with idealisations.
It is the aesthetic appeal of the shadowy, muted cinematography that best portrays the dulled creativity of Guido’s mind, and scenes such as the rows of empty, square cinema chairs when Guido’s film is previewed that evoke the loneliness and lack of support he feels as an artist. Add to this the concrete brutalist set, revealing the unforgiving and unglamourous side of filmmaking. The ending, in which all the characters of the film dance around in a circle to the tune of Nino Rota’s carnival-like La Passarella di Otto e Mezzo, plays on the farcical element of Guido’s artistic choice; to write an honest film about his experience as a troubled director. While 8½ might at first appear irregular, imperfect, and slightly exaggerated, it is where Fellini blurs the lines between fantasy and reality that he has produced an authentic filter of a man’s consciousness.
Image: Marcello Mastroianni as Guido Anselmi in 8½ by Federico Fellini. This image is in the public domain.
NHS in crisis – Oxford braced for student return
There is no doubt – the NHS is now in a more dire state than at any point in its history. As the population begins to numb to the anecdotes of “war-like” conditions in our hospitals there is no longer a guarantee that people will get seen in an emergency. And now, with the Oxford population set to surge with returning students, its healthcare systems are braced for things to get worse than ever before. Understandably, people are scared.
It is worth reminding ourselves just how bad things are. The stories of wait times and abhorrent conditions from nurses and patients are countless and well-documented but it is easy to normalise them – this is not normal. Doctors “examining testicles in cleaning cupboards” is not normal. Sheets being hung around beds in corridors for intimate examinations is not normal. Staff returning for their next shifts 12 hours later and seeing the same patients waiting on the same floor is not normal. Speaking to ‘The News Agents’, one brain surgeon laid out just how dire the situation is: “I’ve worked in India, I’ve worked in the US, I’ve worked all around the world – this is the worst health service I’ve ever seen.” We need to stop thinking that ‘Our NHS’ is special or unique. In the last week with published data, more than 16 300 people waited longer than an hour to be handed over from an ambulance to hospitals (up 31% on the week before). Seven million people are on waiting lists, three million have been waiting more than 18 weeks for treatment and another 400 000 have waited a year or longer. Perhaps most shockingly, 44 000 people in A and E waited more than 12 hours to be seen – that is an increase of more than 11 000% on three years ago. The only thing that makes our health system stand out at the moment is that it is in a worst state than any other in the developed world.
24% of Oxford’s population is made up of full-time students and those 30 000 people are returning to a health service already under strain. Quite understandably, people are scared about whether the city can cope.
In a survey conducted by Cherwell, 78% of people said they were worried about the health service in Oxford ahead of returning. 71% of students said that the university should be doing more to offer reassurance about the systems in place and, on average, people said they would be ‘concerned’ about calling an ambulance on a night out next term.
These concerns are built largely off scarring experiences over the winter break and stretching back far further than that in many cases. An astounding 67% of people said they experienced the crisis first-hand over Christmas with some respondents sharing harrowing stories that have become all too commonplace. One student said that their GP made a mistake on their prescription that it was too overwhelmed to resolve – as a result she had to go without her medication for three months. Another person’s grandmother waited over 30 hours for an ambulance after a fall. The reality is that these kinds of experiences are not quickly forgotten. Trips to hospitals are life-defining events that most people will remember in detail long into the future, the total lack of dignity that patients are suffering right now will live long in the memory.
For their part, a spokesperson for the Oxford University Trust responded to Cherwell saying: “Students form a large and important part of our local demographic. We are familiar with the patterns of term times and know what to expect.
“Health services are under a lot of pressure at the moment. We are asking the public, including students, to help us to help them by keeping Emergency Departments (A&E) for genuine emergencies. If people need urgent, but not life-saving, care, then the teams at NHS 111 can give advice and signpost them to local facilities such as Minor Injury Units, pharmacies, and their GP.”
Elsewhere on their website the trust warns that patients should “Expect long waits at Emergency Departments (A&E) at all hospitals in the Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire West area”.
As clear as the problems are for all to see, the solutions are of course extremely complex. In the short term, urgent efforts are being made in Oxford to discharge patients “wherever possible”. The reality of course is that the crisis in the NHS is exasperated yet further by a social care sector that has been left in tatters by years of underinvestment. In mid-December over 14 000 people were in wards unnecessarily, largely due to congestion in the social care system. Now, individual trusts are being forced to consider discharging patients into hotels rather than care homes at an average cost of £1000 a bed compared to the normal £525. The problems are everywhere and the solutions hard to come by.
The opinion of students is clear with almost all respondents saying that the answer was increased funding and a change of government. Examples included calls for “funding, attracting foreign workers, improving work conditions”, and “funding, funding, funding!!!!”. Some even took a harder line with three people saying that privatisation is the answer.
Clearly though, money and staffing alone aren’t the answers. Although much of it has been eaten up by inflation, there genuinely is more funding and there are more nurses in the NHS than ever before. What is really needed is complete restructuring and reform. Problems from outdated IT systems (one trust says it can’t even tell how many free beds it has) to antiquated red tape and management structures need complete and total re-evaluation.
What worries me is that it seems incredibly unlikely that any politician is brave enough to go far enough. Whispers from Wes Streeting showed some positive signs but the government itself still refuses to acknowledge that there is a crisis at all. Neither Starmer nor Sunak had anything substantial to offer in their New Year speeches either.
None of this though helps in the short term. For now, pupils are returning to Oxford and other parts of the country worried about the care they are going to receive. Only time will tell as to whether hospitals are ready for the surge.
Image: CC2:0//Ron Adams via Flickr.