A Sample of My Analytical Writing Style
Thoughts on Federico Fellini’s Amarcord Amarcord is a Polaroid snap-shot of Fellini’s childhood in Rimini, Italy. Like a Polaroid; the film is tangible, familiar and immediately satisfying to the viewer. These qualities are achieved through the use of the coming-of-age theme and its emotional correlatives. Schoolyard pranks, care free spirit and irreverence for authority are the dominion of youth. Fellini highlights this first stage of the coming-of-age theme early on in his ordering of childhood memories. He uses the urination prank scene as a way to frame the reckless abandon of childhood. This scene shows the children as wholly citizens of youth and evokes in the viewer a sense of childlike dare and invulnerability. The middle scene where the father is interrogated, revived, and then teased by the boy has elements from both the world of the adult and that of the child. The harsh reality of torture and the jest of the boy illustrate the two different stages of life. This scene shows the adolescent as a citizen of both childhood and adulthood. He is straddling the border planting one foot in the world of the adult and dragging the other behind in the sands of the sandbox. It evokes in the viewer a sense of the impending twilight of our last stages of youth. The funeral scene completes Fellini’s coming-of-age theme by introducing the adult reality of death. The death of the protagonist’s mother acts as a posthumous nudge out of the nest. The boy has come of age and is more adult than boy anymore. The funeral is ordered near the end of the film in the dark cold of winter. This scene shows the once adolescent as a new citizen of adulthood and evokes in the viewer a sense of grim mortality. Just as a Polaroid develops over time; so do the seasons of Fellini’s love letter to childhood. Through the springtime of youth to the cold realities of adulthood in winter the players in Rimini press on toward adulthood and pull away from childhood.