2. Amateur Reviews

Compendium of non-professional reviews at Amazon.com, Imdb, Allmovie etc.

or excerpted from websites hosting talented amateur reviewers.

The Editors do not attribute on Overall Score in this section.

USA

90 THE KENNELCO FILM DIARY

Fellini: I’m a Born Liar (2002) - Viewed: 04/27/09

I think I queued this film, a documentary about famed filmmaker Federico Fellini, to gain some perspective on his work, since I have felt somewhat unmoved by his films, also finding myself looking for a toehold to get into them. This documentary came out in 2002, and I remembered it (it’s probably been in my queue all that time), that it had been well-received.

But one of those interesting happenstances happened. Having just watched Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York (2008), I was struck by an interesting parallel. Synecdoche, New York is about a playwright and director whose life melds into his work, his construct of the world becomes more real than the outer world. It’s a film about life and death but very much the creative process and the somewhat psychoanalytic therapy of directing work of one’s creation, of one’s life. And this is because this is very much the discussion and dialogue with Fellini in I’m a Born Liar.

Fellini is a real old man in his interviews, not the made up old man played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman in Kaufman’s film. Fellini is looking back on his process, his career, his philosophy. Fellini’s successes and recognition perhaps freed him from the self-loathing that reeks from Kaufman’s character. Fellini is full of contradictions, issues, but also worked this issue out quite literally himself in one of his most famous films, 8 ½ (1963). And I’m a Born Liar uses imagery from that film more than from any other of Fellini’s works. It would be an interesting double feature, those two films, self-reflective, obsessed with the process of creativity and life.

Of course, the benefit of genuine hindsight is that Fellini cheerfully discusses his work and process, his philosophies. And while we have some outside perspectives of the man and his process from people who worked with him, actors, art directors, cinematographers, friends, and we learn the contradictions therein. Fellini is aware of the oxymorons and contradictions to an extent. But again, this is where the parallel between these films becomes most profound. Fellini notes that his construct of his hometown, one that he built in film and in his mind, is more real to him than the “actual” reality of the physical town. Much like Hoffman’s re-build of Schenectady, New York, a personal microcosm within a microcosm, with actors who “play” the director. In Fellini’s case, it’s Marcello Mastroianni who fulfilled this in his films, his cinematic counterpart, rather than the endless streams of actors who fulfill Hoffman’s ever more complex universe.

Director Damian Pettigrew has a simple, elegant approach to the documentary, utilizing interview footage of Fellini still vibrant but only a year or so before his death in 1993, mixed with reflections of others, segments and images from his films, and tellingly, images of the present day locations of Fellini’s famous films, showing the change or lack of change, the “real” world which Fellini has come to deny, more fixated on his own version of events, place, the world. It’s a good documentary, not utterly straightforward, but quite a discourse on art, creation, imagination and the cinematic experience...

IRScore ★★★★

90 AMAZON.COM (Mastorna "Giuseppe")

As a professional film editor and Fellini enthusiast (I own over 150 scholarly texts on Fellini published in English, Italian, French, German, Spanish, and Portuguese), I feel well equipped to assess whether a documentary on Fellini is remarkable or mediocre. I have viewed this film several times on DVD and conducted extensive research on the critical reviews it received in America and internationally. In my opinion, Fellini: I'm a Born Liar is a remarkable feature-length study that takes the scholarship of Fellini and his complex personality forward in many subtle ways. There are several reasons for this assessment but I would like to share the seven most significant points with Amazon readers:

1. 1) Anyone with a good knowledge of the great director's work will be impressed by the extreme rigor involved in "the paring down to essentials" that this film displays: and it does so without sacrificing content or clarity.

• 2) It is strikingly edited by one of France's best editors, Florence Ricard (she won the coveted French `César' for her work on Microcosmos). Ricard not only tailors the rhythm to capture Fellini's physical presence in long sequences filmed with two cameras, she deftly manipulates the interviews and archival footage so as to interact with the film clips in such a way that meaning is blended with ambiguity, a cinematic quality that Fellini himself would have appreciated.

• 3) Lavishly produced, the film is an archival goldmine. It exploits haunting imagery of past film locations interwoven with film clips and rare documentary footage rescued from the archival obscurity of Europe's major television networks. These lengthy clips showing the Maestro at work are a major attraction that will appeal to experts and novices alike. Footage includes behind-the-scenes of Satyricon, Amarcord, City of Women, Juliet of the Spirits and Casanova as well as a fabulous scene left on the cutting room floor where Donald Sutherland (Casanova) leans forward to kiss a Moor. An uncanny sense of poignancy builds as we watch even rarer footage of Mastroianni on the set of La Dolce Vita and realize that the interviews with Fellini are the last recorded before his untimely death in Rome on October 31st 1993. (To my knowledge, there is no DVD on the market that offers such varied behind-the-scenes footage or exceptional ephemera as the newly discovered portrait of Fellini as a baby.)

• 4) Fellini: I'm a Born Liar is an internal monologue of a movie (which is why clips and interviewees are not identified until the end credits) whose main theme is Fellini's obsession with women to the detriment of his long-suffering wife, Giulietta Masina. Marriage and infidelity are given perceptive treatment in abundant clips from Fellini's 8 1/2. Hanging the film's narrative thread on this central theme allows the film's director (Damian Pettigrew) to shape and control the unbelievably rich material: all the archival footage, all the clips from other Fellini films, all the interviews including Fellini's eloquent meditations on aesthetics, women, memory and dreams, all the locations shots, are made to reflect back upon the Maestro's obsession with the feminine, both sacred and pagan. David Denby's New Yorker review accurately sums up the film's qualities: "I'm a Born Liar is an extraordinarily controlled piece of film in its own right... Pettigrew and his colleagues provide a surrounding texture of film excerpts and freshly shot footage that has the density of one of the Maestro's own movies, without the excess." It is precisely this question of density that initially confounds the casual viewer but the film is nothing if not controlled in its narrative shaping.

• 5) Right from the opening credits, the viewer is given to understand that the film is not at all conceived as an introduction to the Maestro's work or intended as an overview of his career. Pettigrew wisely avoided using an off-camera narrator to comment on the Italian filmmaker's historical background (virtually every bio on Fellini has mined this familiar territory anyways), an intelligent decision as it allows him for the next 105 minutes to focus squarely on Fellini's unique temperament and his ferocious insatiability. In the words of America's foremost Fellini scholar, Dr Peter Bondanella: "There is no question that Pettigrew's film on Fellini represents the most detailed and lengthy conversation with him ever recorded... and few viewers of this fascinating documentary will remain untouched." (Cineaste Magazine Fall, 2003).

• 6) The film has had a very successful career: it was shown on the Sundance Channel and sold to television worldwide; won the prestigious Banff Rockie Award for Best Arts Documentary (it won over stiff competition from PBS, BBC, and NHK); was nominated for Best Documentary at the European Film Awards; made several lists as among the Top Ten Best Non-fiction Films of 2003; has been shown theatrically in over 14 countries; screened at Cannes, Edinburgh, and over 35 major festivals worldwide.

• 7) Fellini: I'm a Born Liar functions not only as a clever posthumous couch-trip, it also serves as a "thrilling master-class in aesthetics." (A.O. Scott, The New York Times) In fact, Pettigrew's achievement is to have crafted a documentary fantasia on film aesthetics that retains the authority of a valuable historical document. While the film undoubtedly makes demands on the viewer and forgoes analysis of Fellini's exceptional work of the 1950s (no doubt due to problems of international copyright), the rewards are many. Highly recommended for the aficionado."

90 AMAZON.COM (Robert Carlberg)

Asa Nisi Masa: "It's rare after an artist passes away to find out anything new about him that surprises and delights you, but this documentary film, which draws heavily on Fellini's own work for inspiration and illumination, gives new insights into the oeuvre he left behind... This is a valuable addition to Felliniana, and a suitable bookend to the legacy he left behind."

90 AMAZON.COM (Martha Ann Kennedy)

A Lot of Truth to a Born Liar: "In the midst of working on a project about five of Fellini's films, I rented this DVD. I was absolutely stunned. Fellini's candor, the choices of cuts from several of his films, Pettigrew's sense of Fellini's gentleness, fury, determination and compassion I found all very moving. Interviews with Terence Stamp, Donald Sutherland, some of Fellini's producers, set designers, etc added a depth to this that made it much more than a paeon to Fellini... It is a film as visually stunning as Fellini's own works and as inspiring...

90 LANA DEL RAY

"My lyrics are very similar to me, who I truly am, but I must admit that I’m currently trying to do some new things. It’s a bit surrealist, full of colors. I feel much more inspired by people like Mark Ryden, Fellini or Picasso… Oh, I’m totally fond of this documentary: Fellini : I’m a Born Liar, which explains that the film-maker was in love with his hometown, and each of his movies is like one of its facets. I like his idea, the fact that truth should never impede to a beautiful lie…"

60 ALLMOVIE (Todd Kristel)

This documentary appears to be intended for people who are already Fellini fans. It does not provide a lot of background information on the director's life and career; the film clips (including extensive footage from 8 1/2) are not identified; the shots recreating original locations from Fellini's films are not identified; and the interview subjects are not identified until the end credits. However, some aspects of this film may disappoint diehard Fellini fans, as well. It devotes relatively little attention to the earlier stages of his career, concentrating instead on later films such as Spirits of the Dead and Casanova; it doesn't offer much insight into Fellini or critical analysis of his work; and director Damian Pettigrew didn't shape the film clips, location shots, archival production footage, and talking-heads interviews into a cohesive narrative (or display the level of imagination that enabled Fellini to get away with his own creative flights of fancy). Nonetheless, this documentary does offer viewers a chance to see interview footage with actors...

50 COMBUSTIBLE CELLULOID (Jeffrey M. Anderson)

… The best stuff... is the on-the-set footage of Fellini at work, directing Donald Sutherland in Casanova (1976) as well as bits and pieces of other films (La Dolce Vita, Juliet of the Spirits). The actors interviewed here, including Sutherland and Terence Stamp… provide the best insight into the difficult director… Stamp talks about one of Fellini's unfinished projects, and about how he deduced the reason behind Fellini's fear of finishing it. Stamp also reveals the secret behind his debauched performance in Toby Dammit with a great imitation of Fellini in directing mode… But little tidbits like that one are few and far between…"

20 AMERICAN BUDDHA ("Librairian")

This version deletes meaningless quotes by Nietzsche; Illuminati speeches on the sameness of truth and lies by people named "Dante"; contradictory and unsubstantiated slander by hit-man Donald Sutherland; strange men in shadow profile; old men with eye-patches; bizarre scene take-offs from Fellini's sincere narrative; childish recitation of every Fellini scene containing dialogue about liars, implying that every time he calls someone else a liar, he's actually saying it about himself; magical curses; scenes of whores and witches whenever "woman" is invoked; dialogue implying that Fellini is muddled in the head, has no talent, no genius, is incapable of love, a phoney, on his way out, and has nihilistically produced nothing, nowhere; images that visualize Fellini diving to his death, crashing his car into a wall, sinking like the Titanic, and reflecting general Illuminati obsession with death, drugs, the Catholic Church, incest, prostitution and homosexuality. In short, Pettigrew's witchcraft has been deleted...

Editors' Note: Is this nonsense crackpot or crack pipe? Note the Tartufferie about "respecting owners' copyrights" elsewhere on the site.

BRITAIN

40 EYE FOR FILM (George Williamson)

… The problem from the outset is that, like many of Fellini's films, it makes no concessions to understanding, jumping wildly and directionless, loosing the viewer. I'm sure that for aficionados, it will be a rare insight into the life, but for the less avid cinemagoer, who has seen only a fraction of the work, it is a stunningly tedious, incomprehensible, pretentious pile of cack… It would be acceptable if this was the way documentaries are made, but having seen so many good ones recently, which work well, regardless of personal knowledge of the subject, it is almost unforgivable to produce something so impenetrable to the casual viewer…

40 EYE FOR FILM (David Stanners)

… The wishy-washy structure drips from one level to the next, allowing Fellini to randomly dissect his own brilliant and, at times, incomprehensible theories on life, art, creation and everything. This is not the fault of the maestro himself, but the director, for allowing the film to turn into a laborious bout of self-importance, as if he wound Fellini up and let him go… Without a hint of professional editing or citation, the whole shebang leaves Pettigrew guilty of answers even more ambiguous than those of his subject...