8 1/2 Made Me Feel Deeply Seen As A Liar

Seen, redeemed, the whole dang deal

This was the first movie I can remember lying about having seen. Watching it now, for the first time, brought me a surprising kind of relief - not just the relief that comes with cleaning up my old bullshit, but also the relief of feeling completely seen and understood as a liar.

This is a film about not being able to make a film, a vision of the absence of a vision. We watch Guido Anselmi, a director, juggling impossible expectations. He’s pledged spectacular thrills to his producers, he’s promised profundity to his critics, and offered emotional availability to his lovers and friends. But inspiration, the key to his well-established identity, completely eludes him. He stays in motion, flailing and failing, completely alone in an ocean of people, everyone looking at him, nobody seeing him.

Except for us. We viewers are granted intimate access to Guido’s inner world—a privilege denied to everyone else in his life. We witness his fantasies and memories, his longings and shames, the deep well of feeling within him that makes him who he is. Everything within him shapes everything beyond him - the people in his life become actors on the stage of his psyche, acting out roles that were written for them long ago without them even knowing it. He sees people as he wants to see them, and tries to be seen the way he wants others to see him. His one literal job is to be in control, but no matter how hard he tries he can’t make reality line up with the noises he makes. If he got away with being a manipulative bastard then this movie would be very boring, even disgusting. But he does not get away with it - he is overwhelmed by the pressures and resistance he feels from the world beyond him and the world within him. If that isn't the human condition then I don't know what is.

The key to it all, the moment that made me gasp out loud and scare my cat, came during a fantasy sequence where he is seated at a table with every woman he has ever wanted, everyone seeing each other, everyone seeing him, nothing to hide, nothing rejected. He says that "happiness is being able to tell the truth without anybody suffering".

I was not happy when I lied about having seen this movie. Nobody else would have cared if I'd told the truth, but I couldn't bear to be seen as someone who had not seen all the good movies twice. I was the one who would have suffered had I told the truth. Or, at least, I subconsciously thought so. Instead I suffered the lie, the knowledge of myself as a liar, the dis-integration of one's self that happens by bits and pieces when living a life without integrity.

We can lie and suffer or tell the truth and suffer, but tell the truth long enough and the suffering will stop.

The film ends with his suicide - or, maybe, just the end of his false life. The final sequence sees him joining hands and dancing with every person who has ever shaped his life, from parents to lovers to colleagues, taking their hands and at the same time letting go, accepting his place among people, the people in the world and the people who make all of us who we really are.

I’m a sober alcoholic - I drank way too much for way too long to try and be in complete control of my feelings, to escape my inescapable fear and shame. I lied for the same reason - I hated who I was, and I lied to look like someone else, and I drank to try and deal with the shame of lying, and I lied about how much I drank. It was a self-feeding cycle. When it became clear that I had a problem I started trying to prove that I had nothing to prove, ‘moderating’ my drinking, going to AA meetings and making sober-sounding noises and hoping that some relief would eventually find me. It did not. The only relief I found was when I opened my mouth and admitted - to myself, and to others - that I was powerless over alcohol, that I was hopeless, and I could not imagine a better future for myself. Only then did I find the help that I needed, because that was the first time that I ever really let anyone see me.

I learned then the most important lesson I’ve ever learned, the one I saw beautifully reflected back to me in 8 1/2 - the parts of you that you most want to hide are the parts of you that people most want to see. We need love the most when we feel like we deserve it the least.

Wherever you need love the most, I really hope you find it.