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?
Nice to start with this movie. I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with Antonioni. I really liked L'Avventura, didn't like L'Eclisse, didn't like Blow Up, and then loved Red Desert. I think Red Desert is my favorite of his so far. Sometimes his subplot becoming the actual plot of the movie approach doesn't really work for me, especially when the focus is on French fashion. This movie kinda avoids all that, and it really works, I think. Its much more focused, and interesting. The character study appeals to me, even though Vitti can be a bit melodramatic at times. I like the idea of someone struggling to adapt to technological advancements, and while everyone around her seems to be doing ok with it (except maybe the son, as you mentioned), she isn't ok, at all. There's no outright condemnation of the technology, or the character, but feels like its somewhere in between in this movie. It really just made me ask, what/who is the problem here, and I wanted to learn more about what was happening with this woman, and the environment she lives in.
ReplyDeleteThe imagery is what really struck me about this movie. L'Avventura was beautiful to look at, but his use of color in this movie is pretty amazing. I love how the colors in this movie provoke different moods and support my question above about the underlying issues, with those hostile reds (or are they beautiful? ah, i can't tell!), the fog, the shop that she's buying and those lifeless colors in there, and then there's the sequence about the child on that island.
One more note - Richard Harris is great in his supporting role, even though the dubs are pretty brutal for him. I need to watch more Richard Harris movies. The Sporting Life will be seen at some point!