Rating: 
Summary: All too timely
Review: Satyricon is a movie that illustrates the moral depravity that results from a decadent culture. Both its framework (nonlinear) and its cinematography (striking, sensual visual scenes) create an almost tangible lewdness that grips the viewer from the very start. One abhors the decadence of Nero's Roman society, yet at the same time one is fascinated by the extent of human gluttony that is condoned. One could easily make a comparison between Satyricon and our modern consumer culture, and for this reason Satyricon is a somewhat chilling film in which we might very well see ourselves.
Rating:
Summary: One of my favorites
Review: Satyricon is a sensory extravaganza! I love the sights, sounds, smells and tastes(the last two so wonderfully brought alive visually) of the whole experience! Don't try to analyze this movie, just experience it! Indulge in the decadance, marvel at the beauty, and be moved by the humanity...My favorite scenes: the Bacchanalic(sp.) feast with mysterious dishes, the eerily Dadaistic theatre performances, the true poet defending his art, the loving family sacrificing all, and the beautiful(though controversial) love story that threads through it all! I show this to all my art students.
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Summary: SOME EPIC DREAM
Review: Satyricon is one long dulless dream. An epic dream that I wish to make my home, among others. Every image is amazing & unique, it is a film replete with life & gorgeous men, particularly two brothers, whom at times appear to be romantically in love with each other. In this world men have younger men whom they take care of in all aspects. In this world no one is inhibited. If one is, one will quickly lose any inhibition as does one woman dancing an incredibly wild & manic dance. I first saw Satyricon in film class, I was one of the few, if not the only person that enjoyed it, my film professor was elated. You must see this film in widescreen, it was meant to be seen in this format. The score is also spectacular, being mostly minimal. A perfect film.
Rating: 
Summary: Gorgeous but empty
Review: Satyricon was written during the reign of Nero. A sarcastic, bawdy novel about decadence and extravagance in Rome, it semed like an ideal vehicle for Fellini. Unfortunately, Fellini made a visually amazing film that left out the humor of the novel. We are left with a cool and detached look at pagan Rome that never quite takes off. Scenes go on too long with little purpose. Theatricality takes precedence over spontaniety and vitality. The film doesn't seem to have a center - none of the characters really matter. What we have is a series of picture postcards - a sort of diorama - of ancient Rome. Even for someone who loves ancient history, such as myself, this was difficult to sit through. Final score: visuals: 100, narrative: 60.
Rating:
Summary: A film that transcends the limitations of storytelling
Review: Satyricon, by Le Maestro, Federico Fellini, is simply one of the most enthralling films ever produced. From the phantasmagorial depiction of Roman life, to our two hapless protagonists, Fellini spins a tale of deceit, duplicitous alliances and fascinating intrigues. The visual imagines are dazzling and the stunning plot arcs from bungled kidnapping and incredible travels to retribution and redemption.
If you just don't 'get' this wonderful allegorical journey, do yourself a favor and watch it continually until you do.
Satyricon is a perfect example of the powerful potential of film to transcend the limitations of story telling along with an incredible display of Fellini's marvelous and seemingly limitless imagination.
Rating:
Summary: Fellini's tour of the ancient world
Review: Satyricon, the classic piece of literature, is the story of a very wealthy man who throws himself a funeral while he is alive so that he can enjoy the feast as well as the funerary laments of all those that love him.
That is just one character that the hero of Fellini's Satyricon encounters. The hero is a young man, a kind of classical ideal, and the film is his odyssey through every level of ancient Rome from street theatre to the opulence of a pastoral palazzo. Some episodes are just plain amusing but some are poignant and some even frightening. Sometimes there is a mix of all of the above as in the very memorable battle with the minotaur in his labyrinthe in which the hero cries out at one point "but I'm just a student"giving a little comic relief to a very frightening moment. At one point the hero loses his virility and must journey to the lair of a pagan sorceress far from any remnant of civilization to find the magic ingredient to reignite his sexual drive.
There is beyond the various sordid adventures always something to look at, both beautiful faces and bodies and very odd ones, a sort of bacchanal for the eyes. All of Fellini's favorite sacred and profane(with the emphasis as always on the latter) themes are here but the period setting gives them a bit of mythic grandeur. This doesn't pack the emotional punch of La Strada nor the existential punch of La Dolca Vita but it is at least as much fun as going to the circus, and you know how the Ancient Romans felt about their circuses. Perhaps the Satyricon could best be described as a decadent spectacle picture. But what a spectacel!
Note:The soundtrack is quite extraordinary. It is done by longtime Fellini composer Nina Rota but uses only instruments that would have been known to Ancient Romans.
Rating:
Summary: Satire of the Satyr
Review: Some movies you just have to see -- forget about plot synopses or snippets of dialogue, you just have to see it to understand. For these movies, there's no way to answer that most natural and inevitable of questions: What's it about? Satyricon is one of these movies. I've been a fan of Satyricon for about four years, when I first took it out of the public library. I'd heard it was weird and had also seem some stills in movie books like LIFE Goes to the Movies. Something about freaks, absurdity, ancient Rome, I gathered. Maybe that was actually as much as I needed to know since that's what it all boils down to, at its essence. I probably would have had more of an idea what to expect that first if I'd simply known about the director, Federico Fellini. At that time, I didn't, and so when I first sat down with Satyricon it struck me not just as an anomaly but as a major shock. Sure, I'd heard of Fellini, but this? This was Fellini? Why hadn't anyone told me? They should have shown this movie to me while I was in the crib, it was so cool. Later on, through watching another great and bizarre film of his, Roma, I figured out what some of the Fellini motifs were and how strongly his personality and taste come through, but at the time, it was a bit of a mind-blower. This guy had survived making this film? Nobody put him in an insane asylum? He was considered great? Certainly I thought he was great, watching the movie, but I tend not to give fellow humans that much credit. Knowing a bit more about Fellini at this point, I can say that while Satyricon isn't the anomaly I once thought -- Roma is pretty similar and I've heard other of his films also follow along in a similar style -- it is certainly in a class of its own. What's it about? Again, I can't say really, but pressed to the wall with a gun to my head, I'd squeal and saying it's a crazy experience, a vicarious exploration of insanity, of dreams, of an absurd adventure by a blond-haired poet who just wants to get his boy lover back and be done with it all. That summary doesn't really express any of it, but it's the best I can do and there it is. Perhaps giving a little background would help. First of all, Fellini didn't make the story up, although the film is certainly a product of his imagination and he did make up a few scenes. The plot, such as it is, springs from that most bizarre and unprecedented of ancient works, Satyricon by Petronius. Nobody actually knows much about the author and this is his only work, but what can be said is that it's a book very different from what most people would expect of an ancient book. You can actually get a hint of this by its very title, which is a pun on satyr (from the Greek saturos) and satire (from the Latin satira), meaning that it's an attack on human vice or folly and a depiction of some serious depravity. Did I mention that this was written around the time of the reign of Nero? Again, having read the original book -- had to having seen the movie -- I can say that it's nothing like any ancient work I've ever run into except possibly the poetry of Catullus, which is hysterically coarse at times. It's simply not ponderous. It doesn't dwell on gods or philosophy or sublime human comedy. No, instead, the book just creates its own territories and definitions. People have tried to analyze it -- the fragments that are left, now that several sections have been missing for ages -- and the general conclusion, so I've read, is that the novel, like the movie, is something far afield from the norm, a twisted tale of such originality as to make analysis within normal frames of reference irrelevant. The question resurfaces: What's it about? A few scenes may help to convey a sense of its atmosphere at least, if not the plot, since the plot is rather secondary. Picture this: Our hero (well, anti-hero really) Encolpio ends up on a mission to collect a hermaphroditic god(ess) from a hidden temple. He and his companions show up in a cave where they find the god(ess) pale and weak, lying in a pool surrounded by worshippers seeking to be healed. They steal the god(ess), throwing the deity into a cart and fleeing across the desert. Unfortunately the god(ess) is weak and needs water. The god(ess) dies and for that, there is a punishment. Encolpio and friends end up in another town (where he ends up in a battle with a man wearing a bull mask... don't ask) and although Encolpio is basically rewarded by getting to bed an insatiable woman, he is embarrassed before a crowd of hundreds when he can't get it up. He's been made impotent! To make things better, he's sent to a special treatment facility where he's put in a room filled with dozens of extremely exotic prostitutes who proceed to try just about everything to get a rise out of him. They pin him down and flog him. There's something about a giant swinging canopy with bevies of girls on it but even thought I've seen the film a half dozen times, I can't remember the specifics, nor do I remember if the "cure" was successful. It's besides the point. I do remember more, though. I know an Roman couple lives in home built into the base of a cliff. They end up committing suicide by slitting their wrists. Later Encolpio and friends run around inside their house and find an African slave girl who speaks in clicks and squawks. There's another big section with a huge ship on rough seas; they capture a giant creature that looks like an ancient depiction of a whale. There's a theater of the absurd, a gallery of freaks, a hysterically fake earthquake, a massively disgusting feast, and oh, it's all in dubbed Italian (at the time, the Italians dubbed over everything, even Italian) with the subtitles making some sense but not all that much since really you use your eyes to understand. Ah, why do I bother trying to explain? What does it add up to? What does it mean? What's it about? Go and see it -- that way you'll find out.
Rating: 
Summary: ruined by pretentiousness
Review: The book was witty and wonderful; I loved every word. But Fellini managed to suck all the life out of it, leaving a pretentious, awful mess. Read the book, stay away from the film unless you're a diehard Fellini fan.
Rating:
Summary: Weird, Wild Film
Review: The DVD is a nice copy. Sharp contrast and good sound. I would have preferred Criterion to have produced the DVD, but it's not bad overall. There aren't any extras, just chapter headings. The film: it's a very strange, exotic, "alien" experience. All of Fellini's films are bizarre, but this one is really "out there"! I wouldn't say it's as good as "La Dolce Vita" or "8 1/2", but it's good. The film is attempting to show us the utter strangeness and disorientation we might feel if we were to go back to that time (Nero era Roman empire). The film can also be seen as a sort of "Roman art film", perhaps prototype sci-fi or "fantasy" through the eyes of someone living in the Classical world.
Rating:
Summary: The Greatest Movie Ever Made
Review: This brilliant movie, without a doubt Fellini's best, remains faithful to the spirit of the 1800 year old original while at the same time possessing an ironic modernism that makes it very relevant to our own times.I'm looking forward to the DVD so that I can freeze- frame as they walk down the winding labyrinths of the incredibly stark and beautiful ancient Rome that Fellini's genius has so masterfully depicted and clearly see into each doorway to get the intricate details woven into this wonderful tapestry.
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