It is time for The
Conference on World Affairs again, so Roger Ebert is in town doing
cinema interruptus. I never go to the interruptus parts, since I tire
easily of hearing the same people spout uninteresting comments. But,
I try to always get to the uninterrupted showing; Ebert says some
funny and interesting things and then we get to see a (usually)
interesting film. (Last year was Floating Weeds, and I’ve regretted
several times that I missed it, so this year I made a special effort.)

I hadn’t seen La Dolce Vita in a number of years. It is still as
interesting and bizarre as I found it the first time. A bit on the
long side, if one is allowed to say that about a classic.

As with the last time, I took the movie quite personally,
juxtaposing my own existential crisis with Marcello’s. Neither
Marcello nor, seemingly, anyone he meets is able to resolve their
crisis and find a reason to live. So, they all die, one way or
another, even the big fish who “insists on looking”. The young girl
at the end shouts to him but he is unable to hear, and turns back to
finish his own destruction.

Leaving the auditorium we walked into the darkening evening and
the start of rain. The colors were quite vivid and a surprising
number of moviegoers followed us down the hill on 17th Street.
Talking about the movie in the midst of a small crowd seemed to
prolong the strange atmosphere left by the movie itself, and I started
to wonder whether my solution to my existential questions was not
merely an illusion I constructed, and whether, perhaps, the
meaninglessness and absurdity of life might not, at any moment, crush
me flat.

Somehow I made it home alive.