Intervista

Director: Federico Fellini
Year Released: 1987
Rating: 2.0

A Japanese TV crew follows around the Maestro directing his adaptation of Kafka's Amerika - naturally, the film-within-a-film footage and the behind-the-scenes material (with all its various disasters) get blurred together. Unlike Fellini's most important films, this is completely hollow, and I can't help but think of it (more-or-less) as a rethink of 8½ except with different sets. His output after Amarcord is wildly uneven - and, for the most part, lousy - although his most ardent defenders (I'm just an ordinary acolyte) are onto something when they argue that absolutely no one could make these movies the same way he did. Now, I'm not completely confident distinctiveness is necessarily a sign of quality, but few would be capable of Fellini's brand of excess.