On Viewing Fellini's "8 1/2"

I have probably viewed this film more than thirty times over the years since it came out in 1963. As I have stated elsewhere, sometimes it takes my mind a great deal of time to process the tons of information contained within a film: sometimes it takes me years.

Since I do not possess the discipline of a Historian and the ability to restrict myself to events and influences that lead up to the film, but on the contrary I allow my memory and interpretation of the film to change with me as the years go by, it may take some time for me to state a final opinion; actually, it seems that I probably never attain a final statement about a film, nor a book, for that matter... nor for a person.

In 1993, Chicago Sun-Times film reviewer Roger Ebert wrote that "despite the efforts of several other filmmakers to make their own versions of the same story, it remains the definitive film about director's block".

Wikipedia, Article on "8 1/2"

I am amazed at what film reviewers write, but they have deadlines to meet, and they do not have the luxury of holding their review up for forty years while they mull over a film.
Truly, as Mr. Ebert says, the film is exactly about "director's block"; approximately it is also about "writer's block", a dry period in a painter's life, a lack of motivation and inspiration for a poet...
I think it may even be extended to a general inability to do one's work with joy, a general malaise, a depression born of a sense of futility due to one's inability to speak or sing or depict or express one's sense of life: every man's sense of alienation and lack of joy; a block in our lives. The film's range of meaning has now become the vast wasteland of modern life.

We experience an immense "Government Block" and "Community Block" at the present time.

I experience an enormous Pain and Loss as I watch our way of life destroy itself.
I feel as if I am standing in Cairo, standing in the Mokattam Hills... I am looking at the limestone and marble buildings in the City of the Dead.

--
note:
The City of the Dead in Cairo is a vast cemetery the tombs of which are now inhabited by many dispossessed people.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_the_Dead_%28Cairo%29