Fellini - Satyricon

Plot synopsis:
[The film is loosely based on the book Satyricon attributed to Petronius Arbiter, and dated to the time of the rule of Nero (37-68 AD). The book is considered to be one of the first, if not the first, novels to have been written, but has only survived in fragments. The film imitates this by being fragmentary itself, leaving gaps between events, and even stopping in mid-sentence. However, there is a definite plot. Breaks in the plot representing the missing parts are given below with a double hyphen --]The film opens with the protagonist Encolpio, a student, who is furious with his room-mate Ascilto, who has run off with their boy-slave Gitone. Encolpio tracks down Ascilto to the baths, and during a fight Ascilto admits to having sold the boy to Vernacchio who runs a theatre. Encolpio goes to the theatre and challenges Vernacchio during a performance, and gets the boy back through the intervention of a magistrate who is attending the play.Encolpio and Gitone walk through the streets of Rome to go home. Seeing the magistrate has followed them and is beckoning to them, they dive into a brothel, and escape out of a back door, and then return to Encolpio's apartment. Ascilto returns too, and the two argue and decide to split up and divide their possessions. Gitone, allowed to choose who he goes with, chooses Ascilto. Only an earthquake saves Encolpio from committing suicide.--We find Encolpio in a museum, admiring the works. He bumps into an impoverished old man, Eumolpus, a poet, who is declaiming on the greatness of the classics and bemoaning the wretched state of modern art. Eumolpus takes Encolpio under his wing, and takes him to a feast at the villa of Tremalchio, a rich merchant despised by Eumolpus for his lack of culture. At the villa the guests are bathing before the meal, and Tremalchio seeing Eumolpus praises him as a colleague poet.The guests enter the villa for the meal. During the meal the poet Eumolpus and the host Trimalchio become steadily more drunk, and in the end have an argument when Eumolpus accuses Trimalchio of plagiarism. Trimalchio orders his slaves to throw Eumolpus in the furnace, and a fierce fight follows in the kitchens.Trimalchio gets morbid and takes his guests to the tomb where he will be buried when he dies. He bids everyone to act out his funeral. During the mock funeral a tale is told: a beautiful, newly-widowed woman decides to starve herself to death by her late husband's dead body in his tomb. A soldier who is guarding the bodies of recently executed prisoners, hears her wailing and goes to her. While they are together, the family of one of the executed takes his body, and when the soldier realises this he contemplates suicide as better than the punishment he will get. The widow however offers the body of her husband to hang up in the place of the criminal, to save the soldier's life.Walking home after the feast, Encolpio finds the battered but still living Eumolpus. He stays with him, and they fall asleep by a lake.--Encolpio awakes, and to his shock everything has changed. He has been taken prisoner by Lichas, a treasure seeker who collects beautiful things and people and takes them to the sickly young Caesar who lives exiled on an island. Encolpio is bundled on to a ship, and sees that Ascilto and Gitone have been captured too.During the voyage Lichas's eye falls on Encolpio, and marries him in a ceremony on the deck.
Meanwhile, the young Caesar is overthrown. A marauding party boards Lichas's ship, and kills him.--A war follows as the new Caesar takes power.--We see a man and his wife whose property is to be confiscated by the new Caesar sending their children off to safety. He frees his slaves, and waves his children goodbye, telling them he will see them soon. He then commits suicide, telling his wife not to do the same.Later Ascilto and Encolpio creep onto the now-deserted property, and see the dead bodies of the man and his wife. They go into the house and explore, and discover a weeping slave girl. Seeing them she cheers up, and after a chase through the building, and a meal, the three spend the night together. They awake to the sound of burning. Looking out they see that the suicides have been put on a pyre by soldiers.--Ascilto and Encolpio are travelling with a caravan of people going to visit a hermaphrodite child demi-god at a temple. During an overnight stop they are told that one of the travellers is going because his wife has been beset with nymphomania and he hopes the god will cure her. But in the meantime he will pay them well if they will go and satisfy the wife.--The temple is a centre of pilgrimage for sick people wishing to be cured. The following night a man persuades Ascilto and Encolpio to help him steal the demi-god. They kill his keepers, and run off pulling the boy in a cart. However, the child cannot cope with the heat of the sun out of doors, and the next night dies. The man blames Ascilto and Encolpio and a fight ensues where the man is killed.--Possibly as a result of the theft, Encolpio has been captured, and is thrown into the Minotaur's labyrinth. If he defeats the Minotaur, his prize will be 'love'. He fails, but the minotaur is charmed by him and declares him a new friend, and refuses to kill him. As a result Encolpio may claim his prize, a session of passion with the beautiful Ariadne - in full view of the watching crowd. He approaches her, joins her on the bed, and discovers he has 'lost his sword'. Ariadne pushes him off in disgust and runs off.And there is Eumolpus, now rich, and degenerate just like the Tremalchio he once so despised. He is a rich trader and his ship will be sailing again soon. He will help Encolpio restore his power, and suggests a visit to the Garden of Delights.--At the Garden of Delights, Encolpio fails to be cured. The curator there tells him the story of Oenothea, a woman who was cursed by a wizard for teasing him sexually, her punishment being literally fire between her thighs.--Ascilto and Encolpio travel to visit Oenothea. On the way the ferryman overhears that they have gold with them as payment. Oenothea cures Encolpio, but the ferryman fatally wounds Ascilto in a fight for the gold.--Mourning, Encolpio makes his way to the harbour where Eumolpus's ship will be sailing. But Eumolpus has died. He has left a will that frees his slaves, and grants his riches to those he mentions only if they will eat his body. Some agree to. Encolpio decides to sail with the ship in order to have more adventures.END

Tags: comedy, avant garde, cruelty, murder, cult, violence, historical fiction, absurd, psychedelic, satire, philosophical, revenge, storytelling

Review:
Fellini engages us through a tapestry of decadence during the Roman Empire with such stunning juxtapositions of exceptional images from a collapsing society that one cannot help but be reminded of our own times and its disconcert morality The film is freely adapted from Petronius' book, which is the exploits of two young Romans, Ascilto and Encolpio, as they venture throughout the empire, indulging in both heterosexual and homosexual relationships In the course of this proliferation of sensuality, Ascilto becomes impotent and madly goes for a cure which ends in tragedy for Encolpio The movie's treatment of the sexual decadence is remarkably powerful without being explicit In fact, in light of the mental images it presents, it actually puts on view very little on screen But there is a great quantity of mysterious whores, hedonists, gluttons, and gross indulgence in carnal pleasure In the midst of this chaos, however, there is a beautifully light reprieve as the young Romans come across a forsaken villa...
If one rates a film on visuals alone, Fellini's SATYRICON would surely be completely off the scale: a phantasmagorical mixture of sensual beauty and the distasteful but evocative grotesque set in an ancient Rome that never was, never could have been, and yet which plays up to every extreme concept we secretly harbor about Roman decadence.
The story is impossible to describe, a series of largely unrelated events in the lives of two impossibly handsome youths (Martin Potter and Hiram Keller) who begin the film by battling over the sexual favors of a slave boy (Max Born) who alternately unites and divides them until all three find themselves sold into slavery and flung from adventure to adventure, most often with sexual (and frequently homosexual) connotations.
Clearly, Fellini is making a statement about the triviality and emptiness of a life lived for physical pleasures alone.But the film is jumpy, disjointed, disconnected; the sequences do not always arise from each other in any consistent way, leaving viewers with a sort of "what the ..." reaction when the film unexpectedly shifts without explanation.
(This is actually in keeping with the original ancient text, of which only portions remain.) In consequence, SATYRICON is ultimately less about any philosophical statement Fellini may have had in mind than it is about sheer pictorial splendor and deliberate weirdness.Whatever its failings, it is an astonishing film, and one that would have tremendous influence on a host of directors who followed in Fellini's wake--although all to often without his style and vision.
Clearly Pasolini, director of such works as SALO, ARABIAN NIGHTS, and CANTERBURY TALES spent the better part of his largely unlamented life trying to out-Fellini Fellini; likewise, it is impossible to imagine how Tinto Brass and Bob Guccione arrived at the notorious CALIGULA without reference to Fellini's SATYRICON.Such efforts to expand on SATYRICON were merely more explicit and less interesting than the original, and I do not really recommend them--nor do I really recommend SATYRICON for any one other than Fellini fans, for with its oddly disjointed feel it is unlikely to please those raised on mainstream.
Literally hundreds of characters parade in front of the camera in this visual orgy of a movie, evoking the memory of lost "Kolossals", or gargantuan budget productions.Fellini's movie was only loosely inspired by its literary source, Petronius's Satyricon.
It tells of a young widow, an oasis of cinematic calm in among the strident cacophony of the rest of the movie.In a narrative passage which is reminiscent of the rhythm of dreams (typical of late Fellini, betraying his Jungian tendencies), Encolpio ends up captured by the pirate Lica, who takes him on board his ship.
His expressive portrait of ancient Rome is a richly ornamented fresco of contrasts; variations within a select kaleidoscope of opposites related to the sacred, the pure, the just, and the beautiful.Reportedly a free adaptation of the now fragmentary writings of Petronius, the film also makes fleeting references to various scattered works and myths of antiquity.
Dialectical discussion and philosophy have been replaced with drinking, vice and monetary greed, thus preventing further creation of works of art at the same pinnacle of excellence as the classics.Later when Eumolpo and Encolpio recline in the open field encased in an early morning mist, the elderly poet bequeaths to Encolpio a series of "natural" phenomena; among them mountains, rivers, clouds, love, tears, joy, sound, song and the voices of man...During the "Matron of Ephesus" scene, a young woman mourning her deceased husband by starving to death in a cave has her chalk white face returned to its natural radiance after accepting the embrace of a handsome soldier.
Their children are sent away to a place free from tyranny which will be "beautiful." Later, Encolpio and Ascilto arrive at the couple's elegant home and enjoy a night of revelry during which Encolpio quotes the "poet" as having said "...as for me I have always lived to enjoy the present moment as if it were the last sunrise..."The tale of the beautiful Enotea and her subsequent punishment after she tricked the wizard who had professed his love for her seems to be a warning to remain "true" to expressions of affection.Following what appears to be his final corruption after having abandoned his idealistic philosophy, Eumolpo proposes an interesting last will and testament.
Later he is forced to battle a huge "minotaur' for the entertainment of a proconsul and his puppet court during the "gladiator prank" sequence.Fellini makes strong use of colour symbolism in "Satyricon." The film opens in what appears to be a large Roman steam bath.
The film did drag here and there (certainly with Fellini letting some vignettes last longer than they should) but overall, the cumulative effect of all the stories creates a unique visceral experience that's seldom seen, back then or since.
My only critique with SATYRICON is that in the end, it feels more like some avant-guard experimental theater experience than an actual film.
Permeated with hedonism and sexuality, highly theatrical, very bizarre and surrealist while still keeping it on the ground and making it more potent and little coherence storywise; its fragments of Petronius classic (which I haven't read) wrapped in Fellinis incredible imagination.Scenography, casting and settings are here of the absolutely highest order.
Besides being visually gorgeous, the film does a very good job of portraying how very different ancient Graeco-Roman society was from our own, and how sex in particular was not seen as shameful or in any way limited to a narrow idea of what's "normal" as it is in America today.
Unlike recent Roman Period movies or shows - such as HBO's "Rome" - which are constantly trying to make the ancient world seem familiar and "just like us." Fellini goes the other direction, and gives the other side of the coin - YES, the Romans were "like us" in many ways, but in other ways, they were also quite Alien, and UN-like modern Americans - VERY unlike..
It's hard to tell what, exactly, the film is or is meant to be: it's a satire and an honest costume drama, a sword-and-sandal epic, a fantasy, an attack on the senses and an art mockery, and a love story.
(Encolpio resembles both Malcolm McDowell -- surely something thought of during the making of "Caligula" -- and a more mature Christopher Atkins in "The Blue Lagoon.") It's also interesting to compare this depiction of Roman society with our current one, and see if Fellini's view of same-sexuality and decadence has any resonance today.
However, the death of Ascilto, Encolpio's alter ego, symbolically represents the death of Encolpio's homosexual desires and self doubts, restoring him to manhood and erasing his impotence.Like the fragmented remains of Petronoius Arbiter's Satyricon, Fellini's film ends as an unfinished sentence.
The plot is told in episodes, where characters move from one scene to another without explanation, where things change and there really is no reason for anyone to do anything.Yet, in that sense, Fellini captured what Ancient Rome was all about.
Like reading Don Quixote, there are stories within the story and we lose our protagonists sometimes, but then they reappear to guide us to the next chapter within the art history book Fellini has created.History, architecture, mythology, painting, poetry: these are the subjects of the movie.
The movie itself features comedy of several varieties -- the simultaneous send-up of the hedonistic ex-slave Trimalchio's pretensions and of the hypocrisy of the philosopher who is one of his meal-grubbing guests; the loss of sexual prowess in front of a jeering crowd of onlookers; the attempt to steal a hermaphroditic "god" from his/her shrine; the escapes from death by the hand of Nero's grim sea-captain (who marries Encolpius in a homosexual sailor parody of a wedding ceremony) and from the Minotaur (who says, "Today I have lost the contest but I have made a new friend").
Satyricon is a slow, bleak and slightly disturbing look at depraved ancient Rome, as two young men fight for the attention of a young slave boy, they are involved in a series of bizarre, erotic and non-linear escapades.
I'm not going to abandon Fellini, having spoken to others who where also bored and puzzled by Satyricon but have enjoyed his other works, I think I may just have to start with one of his earlier films..
I rather read Petronius's book or watch the immortal, impressive, and full of character El Fayum portraits.I prefer more " Fellini's Roma"  as beautiful as "Satyricon", it is much more enjoyable, has a subtle message and a lot of heart and magnificent Eternal City is deservingly the only main character of Maestro Fellini's very personal film..
The cinematography consists of either weird stylized shots or extremely sloppy ones - with bad focus and more headroom than non-headroom.The actual plot of the movie is nothing more than a series of unconnected scenes of gay men either A) eating, B) performing various homosexual acts, C) just sitting around, or D) occasionally actually doing interesting stuff like fighting or moving around.
This movie is 2 very,very long hours of "huh?".Gordon Mitchell, Capucine, and George Eastman all in medium-sized roles help elevate this movie a little bit, but they've all been in much more watchable films.I thought I'd never say this, but if you really want to see a movie about the decadence of ancient Rome, watch Caligula instead..
The movie looks like filmed theater; the landscape is cut out and out of place, the sky doesn't fit the shadows and so on (the theater of the absurd?) Of course this was deliberate, given the great (or so I've heard...) Fellini, but I don't see the point.Maybe that's the idea - watch this movie to contemplate its pointlessness or your lack of understanding.
Fellini even had a Jungian analyst on the set while shooting.For those who haven't experienced it, Satyricon is a loose adaptation of the oldest surviving novel of the same name by Petronius Arbiter, a Roman from the time of Nero, who wrote a sprawling series of satirical and bawdy stories .
This is an art master piece that shows what a movie should look like and makes us remember that films can be the most powerful artistic expression.
Petronius' Satyricon, the inspiration for Fellini's masterful, albeit non-linear, eponymous film, has a good claim on being the first novel ever written.
However, Satyricon is stunning visually with striking roman garb and costumes beautifully photographed, and Fellini's direction while not as nostalgic as personal as some of his other films is accomplished.
Fellini takes us on a bawdy odyssey of episodic nature where Encolpio (Martin Potter) in center, together with Ascilto (Hiram Keller), faces the incredible but impossible, world of ancient Rome; the sultry society of Romans who lives luxurious lives in self-indulgence where the nature of moral traditions is constantly pushed to the limit.
The film jumps back and forth in time, and jags its narration with no sorts of explanation, the viewer just has to go along for the ride without never really understanding the plot - Fellini throws a fascinating travelogue who structurally follows the actual work of Petronius.Grotesquely painted, the film doesn't punctuated the everyday life of citizens of the Roman empire as Petronius' actual script, Fellini mainly makes it come to life by its visual opulence and outrageous connotations.
It's a shame to say things as pat about Fellini Satyricon like 'it's meandering' or 'it loses cohesion' or 'I asked 'who is that character again' too much', but they pretty much do apply, even if you are a really big fan of the movie.
At the least, Fellini never makes it a drag to look at, and his production values- the designs and mix of real locations with expansive Cinecitta sets, usage of colors, costumes, props (including severed limbs and heads), and adding to this Nino Rota & company's strange musical accompaniments- are just as superb, if not even more extravagant, than those for his previous color film Juliet of the Spirits.If the visuals and the look and style of the film help make this world of Rome where there's no real authority and sex and power is up for grabs, the actual substance then has to be taken into account.
While Fellini's Satyricon cannot in any way be considered a good film, there are worse.
All of Fellini's films end up in some sort of non-sense apotheosis which take your feeling of being lost to the highest point -- and signals you, at the moment you were thinking you were starting to grasp it, that there's a whole lot more than what you can comprehend.Fellini once said that he loved decadence much more than sound-mindedness, since the former was so much more rich in its imagery and colors..
Made in the late 60's this gaudy and grotesque looking film was Fellini's portrayal of the hedonistic and free-wheeling weirdness of the sixties through a mirror of ancient Roman decadence.
Based on Petronius' Satyricon, the satirical film follows the exploits of Encolpio across the ancient Roman world.
And, believe me, it's not a pleasant stroll (unless, of course, you happen to be a totally depraved glutton for punishment).Set in Imperial Rome during that mighty reign of Nero (in 60 AD), Satyricon is a literal madhouse of non-stop "WTF?" moments that will either deliver great pleasure or else sicken you with its outright repulsiveness.Filled to overflowing with ghastly-looking characters, homosexual overtones, torture and cruelty, Satyricon certainly didn't leave a whole lot to the imagination.Filmed in 1969, Satyricon was directed (with an obvious cynical glee) by Federico Fellini.Personally, I found this film's twisted story of ancient times to be quite an ugly movie-experience that, regardless of its truly weird and bizarre nature, wore out its welcome (and its novelty) within its first 30 minutes..
I recommend Fellini Satyricon for fans of abstract or surreal art and set design who can see past the disturbing plot and appreciate a true masterpiece of cinema..
I find it fascinating to see how Fellini managed it to create such an unusual movie - a film that has nothing to do with all the other pictures of ancient Romans, made in the 60s.
Although Satyricon looks so surreal, it shows us a much better way to understand how these people 2000 years ago actually lived & loved, as it's far away from the antiseptic hollywood-style, where the slightest hint to the real likings of many Romans was kept as a secret (like the cut out scenes in "Spartacus")..
I feel the picture itself;the different scenes,the costumes,the set, characters,all of it,I believe that was Fellini's vision,and I loved every moment of it and will revisit that love as I shall surely watch it again.Things of the past no matter who's perspective they come from always run the same cycle one way or another...and in this particular film the way this cycle ran was not at all structured or even evident.
I first learned of the film while studying Latin and therefore was aware of the fractured nature of the original work and was prepared for the same in the movie, and while some of the action is provocative a fair amount of screen time is just, well, rather dull--its hard to follow and has no translation to modern times or sentiments, still through all the meandering there are moments--moments that are visually stunning, inspire awe, and feel like nothing from this world..
Fellini's films are some of the most visually exciting ever made, and among them SATYRICON stands out as a masterpiece of hallucinatory cinema.
The more we know about Rome, Fellini, and Italian cinema, the more sense we can make.SATYRICON isn't light entertainment.
You will find action in each scene but, more than that, Fellini is probably the only director who has managed, with this film, to create an understanding of what life in ancient Rome MAY have been like for the lower and middle-class ordinary civilians.
Fellini - Satyricon (1969) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Set during the first century Rome, Encolpio (Martin Potter) and Ascilto (Hiram Keller) fight over which one will get to be with a young slave boy (Max Born).
An example of the decadence is when a patrician man rips his servant's hand off, just to entertain his patrician friends.Overall, "Satyricon" is not the sort of movie that you can try to simply describe; like I said, it's deliberately bizarre.
If that is the case, then Fellini has made a brilliant piece of filmography that pretty much captures the sense of our society and our modern mindset.The two parts of the film that stand out is the feast and the slave ship, and I liked those parts simply for the way those scenes were put together.
If you are the type who loved reading "Ulysses" or watching "The Last Tango in Paris," then "Fellini Satyricon" is the movie for you.
Few movies can claim to have one of the greatest lines in the history of film; Fellini Satyricon can.