We never miss an opportunity to prove our immaturity.
For his final act, four decades after he made his directorial debut with 1950's Variety Lights, Federico Fellini gave a hearing to The Voice of the Moon, which speaks to all sorts of lunatics and dreamers. One of them, played by Roberto Benigni, is well-known in his village for being somewhat cracked (when he's greeted by one acquaintance, he's asked point-blank, "How's your head?"). The sort of person who can open up to anyone, Benigni is the diametric opposite of Paolo Villaggio, a former government official who isn't taking too well to retirement and actively avoids any and all contact, especially with his overly chummy neighbors. Between them, Fellini and his co-writers weave a loosely connected series of episodes over the course of two very eventful nights.
Inexorably drawn to the wells that dot the landscape around the town, Benigni is also besotted with the beautiful Nadia Ottaviani, who naturally won't give him the time of day. Even worse, at one point he finds himself trapped under the stage erected in the town square for its annual Gnocchi Feast, during which Ottaviani is crowned Miss Flour 1989. If that doesn't convince him where his place is, nothing will. Meanwhile, the misanthropic Villaggio stays on the sidelines, declining to get caught up in the celebration, although he will eat a bowl of gnocchi when it's offered to him and is undeniably pleased when Benigni sparks a riot, as is his wont.
Throughout the film's running time, Fellini takes aim at a wide range of satirical targets, including camera-laden Japanese tourists (already a well-worn cliché before he got to it) and the media, which breathlessly covers the Miss Flour pageant and switches gears when three locals use their cherrypicker to capture the moon and bring it down to Earth. Most incongruous of all, though, is the dance party Benigni and Villaggio stumble onto where the DJ plays an extra-long remix of Michael Jackson's "The Way You Make Me Feel" and nothing else. This is too much for Villaggio to take, though, and he decries the revelers' joyless dancing and proceeds to show them how it's done, taking a partner and waltzing to the "Blue Danube." This moment of transcendence is short-lived, though, soon giving way to the King of Pop again, much as Fellini would be taking his own leave three years later. For one last moment, though, he showed that anyone can hear the moon's voice. All you have to do is listen.