Cheap Fellini - Satyricon (DVD) (Martin Potter, Hiram Keller) (Federico Fellini) Price

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Customer Reviews of Fellini - Satyricon

One of the best films I've ever seen
I firmly believe that if one does not "get" this film, then they are the type of person this film is satirizing. Something tells me that Fellini, with this film, came closer to illustrating the actual ancient Rome than anybody. It shows the pitfalls of superstition, how drugs and illusion play a role in what people have called "witchcraft","voodoo","macumba" and such. It shows the unmasked view of the delight that some people take in others misery, in watching them suffer, and in confusing and bewildering them with smoke and mirrors. I enjoyed the scenes that depicted the morally reprehensible theatre of ancient Rome, especially in using period sound effects to illustrate how what we today see and hear in film and theatre is not so far advanced from the illusions that the ancient Romans used to propagandize and marginalize the lives of it's people. The parallel to modern society is so great that those who fit that materialistic mold won't get it, because their minds will protect them from the truth. However, we see over-indulgent despotic emperors using their wealth and power to seduce the minds of the populace. We see the same social elite engaging in disgusting orgies of food and sex. The main character, Encolpius, believing himself to be on a path of discovery is actually being lead through a maze of snares and traps at the delight of his so-called mentor who not only fakes his own death, but shows up to taunt Encolpius with this fact. This film is a such a startling comparison to modern life that it will stop all temporal arrogance. How dare we think we're so advanced when we can't even get from here to there without burying the earth beneath us with concrete and polluting our own air. This is Rome, we live in Rome, it's only been transplanted over here and updated to "modern sensibilities" but Rome is still as decadent and wasteful as ever, as if we think we're rising above nature by destroying it. Well, isn't that how "civilization" works? Destroy one people's way of life and force them to conform to yours. This is Satyricon.

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As classic as the original
Fellini's Satyricon is a loosely based adaptation of Petronius' work of the same title; a classical author who lived a life of hedonism during Nero's reign.

As with the book, the film follows the debauched lives of Encolpius and Ascyltus, two rhetoricians fighting over their amorous desires for Giton, a slave boy who manipulates his masters through pleasure. As with the original work, the film is disjointed and fragmentary. The film is unique for its surreal and provocative imagery.

Fellini successfully reduces the distincition between societal values of post-industrial society and pagan Rome with a blend of classical and futuristic imagery. Fellini also follows Petronius' work by including the chapter of Trimalchio's feast; presenting a pun-laden caricature of a decadent society obsessed with pursuing wealth and pleasure at the expense of everything else. Watching this scene or reading this part in the book, one begins to see how little human nature has changed despite the passage of almost 2000 years. Fellini also seems to want to break the myth of the clean, sober, and orderly Roman empire portrayed by Hollywood in preceding years. Fellini shows no restraint (as with Petronius) in displaying the vulgar and obscene without flinching; this however, is not done in a gratuitous manner and shows his brilliance as a film director.

To those who aren't familiar with Fellini or this film in particular, I would either read the Satyricon itself or rent the film before you actually buy it: it may not be your taste. Remember, this film was released between 1968 and 1969: the peak of the sexual revolution.

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This movie is terrible
This was the first and the last Fellini movie I will ever purchase. The movie is totally incoherant. I do not see what is so compelling about this movie. It was a waste of my time.