I've watched "Dolce Vita" many times, but I can't call it a work that I understand in its very essence.
I never sympathized with the suffering main character. His wanderings and "deep thoughts" always seemed superficial and somehow too pathetic to me. But what I love most in this film is the blonde in the fountain. And probably not only in the film - in life. In art and as a fact of history. This blonde is one of the best things that only exists in this world. You look at her and know that life is beautiful. It can be experienced in any way, as grief and sadness at times, but it is beautiful
Any religious experience, if it is genuine, has one thing in common: reality is experienced as the unity of all that exists. Similarly with aesthetic experience: life is beautiful. There are radically different states of consciousness and perhaps our reality can be thought of as a single collective consciousness that is in constant dialogue with the world of ideas (the Absolute, God, the transcendent - call it whatever you want). But all these different states are a trifle, a kind of dim flicker compared to the true state of consciousness - when life is experienced as beautiful.
It is beautiful and it is. Always. Sometimes we do not feel it and this is only a consequence of the distortion of consciousness. Stupidity and callousness of the soul and thinking. Anyone who has felt it at least once and has comprehended this experience well will already look at the world with different eyes. No matter what state of consciousness he is in.
Here is my favorite scene https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tN275mQytZE