Rating: 
Summary: A TRASH MOVIE!
Review: It's a Fellini Trash Movie! Horrible! A big sheet!
Rating: 
Summary: Fragments of beauty
Review: Just a few lines about a milestone of cinema (many others have written more and better about it than I do).
The book of Satyricon by Petronius has come only in non-coherent fragments to our time, and for that, it's the only adequate form Fellini choose to make this film, and shouldn't be critisized or mistaken as confusing pretentiousness and extravaganza.
Of course, it's not a "realistic" depiction of ancient Rome - it would be rather ambitious for any director to reconstruct authentically one of the many "lost worlds" - "Barry Lyndon" is still one of the best movies trying this impossible task. It's a brilliant idea of Fellini to show us bizarre and exotic images obviously deriving from all kind of cultures to remind us what an abyss of time and change separates us from the literature of antiquity.
Finally, one of the messages of the movie is strongly political: the future belongs to youth and freedom, while the old and corrupted bourgeosie is even eating the dead for money.
Well, call it naiv, call it nostalgic, but I think every lover of good cinema should have seen this beautifully set movie, even if it's just for listen to sequences in latin and ancient-greek, spoken by italians and greeks of our time...!
Rating:
Summary: in hoc signo vinces
Review: Just received this in the mail. I'd been waiting for some time for this to be released on DVD, hoping it would improve on the video version. The print used for the DVD release is not the best print I have seen; the colors are slightly faded, though not as much as the VHS version, but still the LaserDisc version had a superior picture. The soundtrack has been cleaned up considerably, and the subtitles add more dialogue, and different takes on phrases than the VHS version. Still this is worth the investment; it is still a film unlike any I have ever seen. Great photographic composition by Giuseppe Rotunno, as well as Nino Rota's engaging score. (The guitar piece at the end, used in various spots as a "theme", may be one of the most haunting melodies Rota ever produced.) Notice how most every shot is set up as a veritable triptych by Rotunno; very smart use of widescreen format. And then there are the great Fellini moments: Dinner with Trimalchio, the dream-like episode on Lichas' slave ship, and the ending on the beach (a typical Fellini place to end a film) still leaves me hypnotized. Not for anyone wanting their Roman epics served up with sandals and spears (though there are plenty of those), this is a truly unique vision of ancient Rome.
Rating:
Summary: Fellini was missing both his brains
Review: Let's hope this awful mess, and Truffaut's much less awful but still reeking "Just Another Pretty Kid Like Me" are never released on DVD so sane people will be spared the ridiculous spectacle of pretentious morons trying to put some clothes on emperors lounging naked in their own arrogance. Fellini, the director with the longest uninterrupted record of cinematic masterpieces: some 12 films in all, starting with the co-direction of "Variety Lights" and ending with the spectacular "Tobby Dammit" section of "Spirits of the Dead," went on to direct, at the height of his fame and success one of the most awful pieces of garbage in the history of cinema: "Satyricon." Superstar film critic Pauline Kael, so absolutely off the mark in her negative reviews of 8-1/2 and Juliet of the Spirits, was finally able to redeem herself as a prophet of sorts, as if she knew all along this would happen, when Fellini dished up this mess of messes. She wrote a completely on-target and fully-deserved bashing of "Satyricon," with which I cannot agree more . After this artistic low-point Fellini went into a slump that lasted through the rest of his careeer with only occasional returns to his previous form (the good but not great Amarcord, the highly underrated "And the Ship Sails On.") Whatever you do, don't waste any time thinking this film 'must be good' just because it has Fellini's famous name on it, it's not; just like Kundun's being directed by Scorsese shouldn't blind you to the fact that it's brain-dead New-Age fluff at its most excruciatingly boring which doesn't even have the entertainment value of 7 Years In Tibet. And as long as we're talking in New-Age lingo and in hopes of establishing better tastes, let's not forget that truly atrocious soft-core New-Age porno with the famous name of the director of 2001 attached to it that should've been laughed out of existence and instead had (and still has!) critics playing a game of trying to find 'hidden meanings of genius' that aren't there. Satyricon is pure sadistic cinematic torture that no one should put themselves through under any circumstances no matter how much respect they have for Fellini.
Rating:
Summary: One of the Greatest Movies
Review: Occasionally a movie comes along in which a simplistic, mono-dimensional meaning isn't laid out in such a way that even the laziest minds just couldn't miss it. I remember as a teenager seeing this movie for the first time, and being astounded that all that people seemed to see were shocking depictions of Roman decadence. I had sat through the movie amazed at its extraordinary cinematography, and overwhelmed by a moral story of epic proportions. Like most great art, the meaning of Satyricon is multi-layered, and reflects against itself enough to hold a richness of ambiguity that unfolds more for me each time I see it. I was also incredulous to read reviews accusing the movie of being formless. On the contrary, Fellini had created a beautifully structured work out Petronius' rather episodic tales.
Satyricon is a powerful portrayal of a young man's quest to rediscover the potency he has lost in a corrupt world (our world being no less corrupt than that of Fellini's Rome), both sexually and aesthetically. The events and characters in the movie resonate deeply with mythic archetypes, all playing a part in Encolpio's quest.
If you want a key for delving into the structural and metaphysical meaning of this movie, consider the two legacies of Eumolpus: the first he offers to Encolpius as they lie in the fallow fields after being evicted from Trimalchio's Feast, just as the dawning sun begins to lighten the sky. The second he leaves at the end of the movie to those who will consume his body. The first is the wealth of poetry, of the heavens, the earth, the air, of life itself. The second is worldly wealth and its corruptions. How beautiful is the moment when Encolpius joins the ecstatic, dancing, laughing servants of Eumolpus to sail away from the bizarre funeral feast to the true legacy of the great artist. So with us: what are we able to take from the legacy of Satyricon - does Fellini offer us merely a superficial indulgence in the perversity of Roman decadence .... or rather, are we able to comprehend his true gift, a profound vision of the potency of life itself?
Rating:
Summary: Fellini Satyricon
Review: Petronius - sometimes called "Petronius Arbiter" - is believed to be the author of a work known as "Satyricon", after the Iliad and the Odyssey perhaps the most translated piece of literature from antiquity. Two translations, one by an American and the other by an British professor, were published in 1996 alone. I have five different versions in my own bookcase. Only a very small portion of the complete work has survived; some scholars estimate as little as one-twentieth of its entirety. "Satyricon" is a parody of the great epics that preceded it. Instead of the past doings of legendary heros, it relates the adventures of two educated scapegraces, Encolpius and Ascyltus, and their catamite Giton. They wander through the whorehouses, temples, and rich men's houses of the semi-Greek cities of the Italian south in the time of Nero's reign desperately seeking money and sex. The three are completely without morals or civic virtues, and their sole standard of behavior is the immediate gratification of their desires; their only limitation is their poverty. Petronius evidently meant to compare the founding myths of Rome with the vulgarity, greed, and licentiousness of his own time and satirize those who continued to give lip-service to the traditional virtues while indulging in the same sort of behavior as his anti-heros (his contemporary Seneca comes to mind). Federico Fellini makes the same statement for his own time in his 1968 film of Petronius's novel. Many dislike it for its incomprehensibility, and it's certainly not an easy film to understand for those unfamiliar with the novel and with the history of ancient Rome. I suspect that few who've seen the film know the legend of G. Mucius Scaevola or know that condemned criminals were mutilated or executed on stage in the course of a play. Fellini put unexplained breaks in the action that reflect the lacunae in the work, but that do nothing to make the film friendly to the casual viewer. He also was very loose with his use of the novel. He left out episodes such as the one of the Pergamene boy and of Giton's mock marriage and introduced some of his own. The film however is visually rich. The sets are surreal and forbidding with many stylized faces in the background that give an ominous sense of ancient ghostly presences that may still have power over human life despite the trappings of an advanced and sophisticated civilization. The land- and city-scapes are desolate, consisting of stone, brick, concrete, and sand with little vegetation in sight. A number of objects have many long spikes on them making them resemble implements of torture more than their ostensible purpose. The background noises and music consist of animal calls, machine noises, and the efforts of African musicians. Fellini depicts ancient Italy, and by implication modern Western society, as a wasteland empty of purpose.
Rating:
Summary: MASTERPIECE OF THE GROTESQUE
Review: Phew! Fellini's wild imagination runs rampant here, with a nightmare journey through a series of brothels with fat prostitutes, dwarfs, midgets, a truly sickening Roman feast/orgy with stuffed pigs, a priestess who belches fire from an uncomfortable part of the anatomy, a sinister visit to the lair of the minotaur and a deeply disturbing encounter with a hermit hermaphrodite. It's really too much to digest in one sitting, so I recommend viewing the movie over two days. Not for sensitive souls, but it's certainly a masterpiece of the grotesque. The only other movie that comes close is Burrough's The Naked Lunch.
Rating: 
Summary: Film version of a masterpiece of Roman literature
Review: Possibly Fellini's most complex work, "Satyricon" is two hours of densely packed cinematographic action, with scarcely a plot in sight. Fellini likes his audience to work at understanding his art - "Satyricon" can be obtuse, can be baffling, can be downright disorienting, and it can take two or three viewings before you feel you have grasped what is happening. Two or three viewings? Is any film worth that level of study unless it's to get you marks in an end of term exam?
Fellini's film is a re-telling of a masterpiece of Roman literature. "The Satyricon" ('satire', which may originally have been a dish containing many different choices of meat and fruits) was written around AD 61. Only fragments remain. It ridicules the bad taste and pretensions of Roman society, using foul language and lurid fascination with bodily function to attack high culture and art.
Born in Marseilles, Gaius Petronius, author of "The Satyricon", was Emperor Nero's style guru, a man who partied to excess. The historian, Tacitus, described him as passing his days in sleep and nights in revelry, a man famous for indolence. He fell from favour and was forced to commit suicide. Nero, himself, was fascinated by theatre, music, and literature ... and by his own pretensions as an artist. Traditionally, his reign is seen as one of violence, and of rule by a highly unstable and fractious individual whose court was a living theatre of excess.
Set near Naples, "Satyricon" has that small town, seaside setting beloved of Fellini. The story follows the romantic adventures of Encolpius ("in the groin") as he vies with his friend and rival, Ascyltos, for the affections of a beautiful young man called Giton. We are presented with a roller-coaster ride through a seemingly endless series of disjointed scenes of Roman life - a feast, a brothel, a country villa, a town house, a theatre, a picture gallery, the public baths, a ship, a shipwreck - the various characters making acerbic asides and observations on the state of the world and the foibles of its peoples.
Petronius mixed language - the cultured classes speak in the proper Latin beloved of schoolmasters, but the poorer classes curse and swear, vulgarise their grammar, and generally mangle their declensions and conjugations. Fellini faithfully follows this style, deliberately recreating the gross and the vulgar.
Petronius savagely pilloried his targets. Fellini maintains the pattern. The characters are grotesque. While Petronius's characters are real - his writing breathes with the vitality and reality of his world - Fellini's images are wholly surreal, the more so as he is holding up a 1900 year old mirror to the Italian and cultural world of his own day. Many of his images explore the pretensions and self-satisfaction of both the film maker and the film viewer (or reviewer).
Fellini is regularly self-reflexive, using his own cinematography to comment on the state of contemporary cinema and analyse the process by which we view and understand the moving image. He can take the thinnest of plots and weave around it a surreal imagery which keeps you engrossed. Fellini was also fascinated by the nature of individualism, and in particular how individualism in the 20th century was so frequently expressed through materialism and possessions. So many of the possessions in "Satyricon" are actually slaves - is this Fellini commenting on how slavishly we follow fashion and aspire after each must-have possession, until we ourselves just become the playthings of the marketing industry?
The film abounds in homoerotic images, though homosexuality for Fellini often appears synonymous with effeminacy. The sexual tensions of the film, however, satirise the depersonalising of sex - it is an act involving the body, but too often emotionally and cerebrally vacuous. Life is lived as a series of disjointed scenes - there is no flow, no purpose, it's simply remembered as highlights and underlined passages.
There is something fundamentally empty about "Satyricon". It exposes too many human foibles as facades, too much of human life as insubstantial. Watching it two or three times - or more - you can become subject to crippling self-reflexivity, questioning your own pretensions and assumptions. Is it worth the effort? Well, it makes me laugh in places, it makes me gasp in others, and sometimes I just scratch my head. It's too obtuse to warrant five stars ... to give it three would be churlish.
Rating: 
Summary: The Emperor's New Clothes
Review: Remember the old analogy of the Emperor's New Clothes? The joke was, he wasn't wearing any but no one had the courage to be the first to stand up and say as much. So consequently, everyone in town is praising the Emperor as he parades down the street in the nude. Such is this film. It makes little sense. It makes me recall the infamous scene in Woody Allen's 1977 classic "Annie Hall", where the main character is standing in a movie line behind a pompous film professor from Columbia University. In the film, the pontificating professor berates Fellini as an "indulgent" filmmaker. After seeing Satyricon, I would have to agree with this judgement. "Indulgent" is a great word to sum up this movie-going experience. It's what happens when an aging director who's word never gets questioned tries too hard to make a really psychedelic, sexy, disturbing, extravagant film that will hopefully break all bariers. Unfortunately, that's all giving Satyricon far too much credit. One reviewer puts it best by simply stating that this film is boring. It is. For such "scandalous" scenes, scenarios, and settings, the story is almost non-existant, and as a result, the viewer is left wondering why they should even bother to pay attention. Without the premise of a believable linear story plot, there's little to focus on. The visuals and world music score get very old very quickly as the user acclimates to this strange new world. An hour and a half later, you're wondering if you should have popped a few pills or smoked a bit more of the old bong in order for anything to make sense. This is a ridiculous and completely a-historical drama about nothing at all. It's too over the top without any real main characters, and certainly none that the viewer can identify with. In a nutshell, it's just a bunch of weird hippies doing weird hippie stuff. I suppose in its day it was impressive, but today it fails on all counts. Stick with the earlier and far less abstract period of Fellini's career and you won't go wrong.
Rating:
Summary: One of my favorites
Review: Satyricon is a feast for the senses... The sights and sounds(thanks to my favorite soundtrack by Nino Rota)are inescapably exotic...Your sense of smell and taste will never be the same after the banquet scene...This movie touches on intense human experiences of loss and love...the love story is intense, though controversial. Don't try to understand Satyricon literally, just lose yourself in the fantasy. My favorite scenes: the widow and her new love, the family torn apart, the Dadaistic theatre performances, the true poet against the pretender...
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