The most honest depiction of adolescence

“Do you touch yourself? Just look at those rings under your eyes. You obviously do.”

Fellini’s Amarcord is one of the all-time great films about adolescence. The backdrop? A small seaside village in 1930s Fascist Italy, AKA, Fellini’s coming of age years.

What I love about Fellini is his honesty. There’s truly no other filmmaker besides maybe Jean-Luc Godard or Woody Allen that brought so much of themselves to their work. You can argue that this is self-indulgent but to me, the greatest artists of all time are just that. Someone who isn’t afraid to give their audience the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, no matter how harsh it can be.

Between The 400 Blows, Zero For Conduct, The Outsiders, Cinema Paradiso and even Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Amarcord to me is the single most honest, and sometimes brutal, depiction of adolescence. It accurately captures the angst, edginess, lust and repression of the teenage psyche better than any other work I’ve ever seen. No matter the time period, no matter the place, no matter the culture, this film’s depictions will forever be universal.

Fellini had a philosophy that life was a circus, something that is very much exemplified through all the different eccentrics going about their lives in the town that it very much feels just like a clown show. As bizarre as these characters can be, never once does it feel unnatural.

This film, it’s backdrop, it’s eccentrics, it’s ideas, come from such a personal place from Fellini’s past that once again, he leaves you with another ending that lingers on screen and in your mind. Truly one of his greatest films.