By M
We are back in business here.
I spell the title that way because IMDb indicates it’s the original title, which I find awesome.
This movie is certainly a must-see for anyone who cares a bit about cinema. A lot has been said about it, and I guess the most important thing in that lot is that it is Antonioni’s masterpiece. I am not going to enter that debate for the unfortunate reason that I don’t know enough. What I can say is that this movie feels like visiting a museum: one recognises many of the things learned in the classroom.
It’s a bit of a lesson for a first-year undergrad: categories are there and they are very clearly there. For example: the multiple mises en abyme, going in all possible ways. It’s also an interrogation about the status of “art”: what is art? what in painting is art? is photography art? can art be commercial? what is cinema? etc. And these elements are obviously discussed, obviously put on screen. Antonioni traces numerous connection lines between photography and painting, and then, between cinema and all the other arts.
It’s worth noting here the naivete of the subtelty attempt that turns into the most-explicit sentence one could imagine. One of the characters, observing a zoomed-in printed photograph says: ‘it looks like one of X’s paintings (abstract)’. Yeah… ok…
Other eternal questions are: why are people interested in each other? is fashion the decay of society? do people use each other? what is real in perception? and even, if we dare: does reality exist? what’s the point of beauty/art? (with the notorious scene of the main character fighting with two models; a scene that doesn’t serve the plot at all and in cinematographic terms very explicitly serves the purpose of not making the plot advance AT ALL).
My guess is that in 1966 such categories weren’t that obvious. I guess, when Antonioni made the movie, it was striking to ask such questions. Nowadays it feels like those questions are perfectly well brought to the movie, as if it was an end-of-year project executed by the best student in the class, but it also feels like lacking some sort of genius’ mess. I am ready to acknowledge I probably don’t know what I am talking about.
I found one filming techinque absolutely ashtounishing and I regret that we have now cameras that avoid that kind of thing: when the scene presents several dimensions, the camera is focused on the spot where the character is moving to, where he is at the beginning of the scene is blurred, in such a way that the character literally comes to focus. I thought that was fantastic, it’s disturbing, catching, beautiful.
I won’t comment on the fact that it is based on a Cortazar’s short-story, because I have not read it, and it saddens me to think that Cortazar might be outdated.
Of course, a must-see, with a notebook by your side.
cucurbitacee 