Levi Strauss theorized that
the function of a myth lies in reconciling basic contradictions, whether they
are felt within a person or at the societal level. Such contradictions, and
even dichotomies, can be used to energize a story’s dramatic tension and for comic
effect, such as through misunderstandings. Typically, contradictions are
reconciled in the denouement of a narrative; if so, the audience gets a psychic
payoff. Otherwise, the audience is left with the uneasy feeling that the world
is somehow not in order. I don’t believe that Fellini reconciles the
contradictions in his film, La
Dolce Vita (1960). The last scene, in which the film’s
protagonist, Marcello, a young and handsome single man who is a tabloid
columnist, turns back to follow his high-society drinking friends, who are
leaving the beach. He makes the choice to return to his life of late night
parties with empty socialites rather than to walk over to the only sane,
available woman in the film. Marcello
does not find or establish an equilibrium, but goes on as a lost soul. Although
religion is not much discussed by the characters in the dialogue, the film’s
structure can be described in terms of going back and forth between two
contradictory basic principles—one represented by the Roman Catholic Church and
the other by the Devil. In spite of the back-and-forth, which even includes the
visually high (overlooking Vatican Square) and low (in the basement-apartment
of a prostitute), the main characters remain as if in a state of suspended
animation between the dichotomous and contradictory relation between God and
the devil. If commentators on the film haven’t highlighted this axis, the
verdict could be that film as a medium could go further in highlighting
religious tensions and contradictions than it does—not that going beyond
religious superficialities to engage the minds of viewers more abstractly
necessarily means that the contradictions must always be resolved or sublimated
in a higher Hegelian synthesis and the dichotomies transcended.
The full essay is at "La Dolce Vita."
