In the interview of Antonioni, conducted by everyone's favorite nouvelle vague name to drop, Jean-Luc Godard, the director speaks at length about how the industrial wasteland scenes in the film are meant to evoke a sense of wonder and beauty. For a modern viewer it is difficult not to associate the oil slicks and yellow factory smog with anything other than the environmental apocalypse we've been promised by experts is just around the corner. Antonioni goes on to speak about how Monica Vitti's problem in the film, aside from her son's legs going numb--or did they???--from the wonder and beauty of the polluted environment he's mired in, is that she cannot adjust herself to the brave, new world of progress. It amazes me that Antonioni was able to create a film of such stunning cinematic sublimity with such rich, disaffected characters, and yet at the same time maintain an almost naive faith in technological advancements. Thoughts?
