“Fellini Satyricon” (1969)

Fellini Satyricon

Grade: A-

Fellini Satyricon, loosely based on a first century Latin novel by Petronius, is perhaps the strangest film ever made. Not only that, but you could also say that it is the most decadent, grotesque and gayest film ever made, too. A few more notes on Fellini Satyricon:

Directing:

Fellini Satyricon is the pinnacle of Italian director Federico Fellini’s surreal avant-garde explorations. To create this nightmarish portrayal of an overstuffed and overcrowded Ancient Rome, he employs a maximalist kitchen-sink technique, throwing everything at the camera and seeing what sticks: nudity, ultraviolence, depraved sex, homoeroticism, pedophilia, cannibalism, dreams within dreams, stories within stories (the chilling Matron of Ephesus episode and its subsequent joke is one of my favorite Fellini sequences), uncanny dialogue, abrasive dubbing, elephants, hermaphrodites, etc.

It’s a film like no other, constantly moving, constantly bewildering, at all times reveling in its own bacchanalian debauchery — only Fellini could turn something so deliberately off-putting into something so funny and celebratory. It’s as if the orgy scene from La Dolce Vita or the harem scene from 8 ½ was filmed in vivid Technicolor and extended to two hours.

Acting:

The large and diverse ensemble is used mainly for eccentric appearance: the weirder, the better. Fellini Satyricon is an unholy procession of pagan excess, and each character (or caricature, rather) is intentionally engineered to shock and awe. They make random arm movements, they look directly in the camera, they say the darndest things — Fellini’s Ancient Rome is just as alien to us as our modern age would be to the Ancient Romans. In this way, the cast does a terrific job.

Writing:

Fellini Satyricon is told in a series of disconnected episodes, with the “main characters” Encolpius and Ascyltus fighting over the love of a young slave boy named Giton. There is so much strangeness packed into every frame that the storyline, or lack thereof, hardly matters. We’re in awe of the visuals, even as we’re repulsed by what we see. Sure, the film is a little too outrageous for its own good, but that’s also part of the charm. For better or worse, Fellini Satyricon might be the most stream-of-consciousness film ever made.

Music:

Fellini Satyricon opts for a somewhat sci-fi mix of electronic drones, ancient folksong and primal chanting. The music, while effective, is overshadowed by the noisy audio, in which harsh, shouted dialogue creates a din of dissonance that pummels the viewer into disorientation. Has any other film in the history of cinema used a musique concrète soundtrack? Such a gloriously lurid movie.

Ending (SPOILERS):

The mark of a great director is the ability to wrap up a film in a way that is poignant and profound. And the mark of a legendary director is to do that with Fellini Satyricon. Somehow, someway, Fellini concludes this movie in a thought-provoking fashion: ending in mid-sentence, just like Petronius’ original text.

Right in the midst of yet another adventure, Satyricon then smash cuts to the film’s central characters transposed onto a crumbling, modern-day fresco. The surreal events of Ancient Rome happened so long ago that they are as good as forgotten. Good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor — they are all equal now. We’ll be there someday, too.

“Better to hang a dead husband than lose a living lover.” — Matron of Ephesus

Why Fellini Satyricon gets an A-:

Fellini plumbs deep into the furthest recesses of his sick, twisted mind to come up with Fellini Satyricon, a surreal avant-garde visual wonder that is, without a doubt, the weirdest film ever made. But the one thing that prevents it from being on the level of Fellini’s other masterpieces is that weirdness is it’s only theme.

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