A Whole Lot of Nothing

Film: L’Eclisse (The Eclipse)
Format: Streaming video from Hulu+ on various players.

I’m kind of dreading the next 600 or so words, because I don’t feel like I have anything to say about Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’Eclisse (The Eclipse). I’ve had similar problems with Antonioni in the past. His films tend to be filled with a lot of stuff not happening, and not much of a plot. That’s certainly the case with this one. But, I’m game to try, so here we go.

A woman named Vittoria (Antonioni favorite Monica Vitti) breaks up with her boyfriend Riccardo (Frincisco Rabal). He tries to cling to the relationship, but eventually, they complete the break-up. Vittoria then goes to visit her mother (Lilla Brignone), who hangs around the Rome stock exchange monitoring what her broker is doing for her. Her broker is Piero (Alain Delon), who takes a moment between making scads of lire to introduce himself to Vittoria. Vittoria tries to gain some consolation from her mother about her recent break-up, but her mom is far too involved in the money she just made.

Ennui

Film: La Notte (The Night)
Format: DVD from NetFlix on laptop.

Last year on Super Bowl Sunday, I watched a musical. While I certainly could have done the same this year (I have a few musicals left to watch, although not that many), I decided this year I wouldn’t go the non-manly route. Instead, I went the non-American route. I don’t specifically object to football or sports in general (in fact, I used to be a something of a sports geek, particularly football), but I don’t care about them any more. There isn’t a single sport that I pay even a moment of attention to. Super Bowl Sunday has become my favorite day of the year to go to a restaurant: as long as you avoid sports-themed places, they’re pretty much empty and you get fantastic service.

Anyway, since Super Bowl Sunday is effectively an American national holiday as important as any other (and more important than many), watching Antonioni’s La Notte (The Night) sounded like something as far away from watching grown men throw each other to the ground as I could find. There’s a part of me that truly enjoys this sort of cultural clash.

What I Learned

Film: Zabriskie Point
Format: DVD from NetFlix on big ol’ television.

Zabriskie Point marks the third of four times The List crosses paths with “The Fifty Worst Films of All Time,” leaving only one film left for me on both lists. I hated the first (L’Annee Derniere a Marienbad) and didn’t love the second (Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia). I’d like to state that my luck changed with the third, but that would be lying.

I could complain about the aimlessness of this film. I could also get angry about the wooden acting of almost everyone involved, particularly our two leads, Mark Frechette and Daria Halprin. I could talk about the fact that Antonioni evidently knew nothing about the counter-culture movement in the United States but made a film about it anyway. All of this I could do, but I will not. Instead, I’d like to talk about the things that I learned while watching this film.

• You can shut down the ROTC with a single Molotov cocktail.
• You should be willing to die, but not of boredom.
• Anarchists still have to go to meetings.
• Hippie girls don’t dig secretarial work, but they do it when they need the bread.
• Joining isn’t a matter of choice, but a matter of survival.
• “Associate Professor of History” is too long for a police form, so “clerk” is a good substitute occupation.
• Trying to bail someone out will get you arrested.
• Policemen have never heard of Karl Marx.
• Gun salesmen will break the law and sell you a gun without a waiting period if you need to protect your women.
• The law says you can protect your house, so if you shoot ‘em in the backyard, be sure to drag them inside.
• Mannequins are better spokes models than people, and an address is a suitable replacement for repeating a phone number in an advertisement.
• No one will trust you for the price of a sandwich.
• You should get a pilot’s license just in case you ever need to get off the ground.
• To get a hippie chick attracted to you, buzz her with your stolen airplane, and then drop her a giant shirt.
• If you go to a named spot out in the desert (like, say, Zabriskie Point) you should still feel free to have sex in the open in daylight. Don’t worry—no one will see you. Try this at the Grand Canyon or Mount Rushmore.
• If you do have sex in the desert, a group of hippies will appear around you and have sex, too.
• If you roll around in the desert naked and then proceed to sex, oral sex is not specifically off the table, regardless of the inevitable mouthful of dust.
• It’s better to go to prison than to get a haircut.
• Old creepy guys who live alone in the desert have tons of paint around, and will help you decorate your stolen airplane with drawings of giant boobs.
• If you’re going to return your stolen airplane with the hope of getting away, you probably shouldn’t radio ahead and tell them you’re coming.
• If you do return your stolen airplane, don’t try to land, because the police will shoot you when you are trying to stop.
• When you get to your final destination after dirty desert sex, don’t change your clothes.
• If you can find water, you can find gold.
• Never show an explosion once when you can show it a dozen times.

• Nothing says “anti-consumerism” like an exploding loaf of Wonder Bread.
• Zabriskie Point has more Zabriskie than point.

Why to watch Zabriskie Point: Because you have nothing better to do.
Why not to watch: Because it’s pretentious, and not in any good way.

...And This Factory Makes Angst

Film: Il Deserto Rosso (Red Desert)
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on kick-ass portable DVD player.

Good directors tell stories. Great directors try to do a lot more. When Michelangelo Antonioni decided to film in color for the first time with Il Deserto Rosso (Red Desert), he did so with more in mind than simply using color. The goal was to use color for specific purposes, not simply have it on camera just to have it.

Antonioni naturally went to Monica Vitti, his muse, as the centerpiece of this film. She plays Giuliana, a woman who has undergone a nearly complete mental breakdown and who has not yet completely returned from it. After an accident, she spent a great deal of time in the hospital, where she also tried to kill herself. She feels disconnected to everything around her—her husband, her son, and the rest of her world. Giuliana is in the middle of an existential crisis, and it’s not clear at all if she’s climbing out of it or spiraling deeper into it.

She doesn’t have a very nice location in which to attempt her recovery. She exists in the middle of a bleak, industrial landscape in which it appears that everything that should grow has died. The trees are withered and dead and the landscape is dominated by huge factories. The film has no musical soundtrack; instead, the “music” is the hum of electricity, the whir of giant machines, and the clank of the factories. It is a completely industrialized world, a world of human creation and destruction. The factories pump their waste products into the nearby rivers, killing the wildlife—people complain that their food tastes of petroleum.

Giuliana’s personal life fares no better than her external world. Her husband, Ugo (Carlo Chionetti) runs one of the factories and is emotionally distant. Giuliana also seems separated somehow from her son (Valerio Bartoleschi). Into this bundle of angst and existential drama walks Corrado Zeller (Richard Harris), a colleague of Ugo. He is immediately attracted to Giuliana, and there seems to be some reciprocation, but she is too emotionally shattered to handle much. Eventually, she confesses her fears and anxiety to Zeller, who takes advantage of this moment of weakness for his own pleasure.

Like many exceptional films, Il Deserto Rosso is not a story with an actual plot (although it is not plotless), but is instead a character study. Giuliana has been thrust into this landscape of human creation, but it is a landscape inhospitable to humans. It is completely unnatural and it disconnects her from her natural surroundings. In this environment, since there appears to be no escape from it, Giuliana must learn to adapt herself—and this is where the problem comes in. She is unable to adapt to this human-made and simultaneously inhuman world of the modern day, in which clean ocean water is replaced by industrial sludge and factory smokestacks stand in for trees.

What is most impressive here, even though the focus of the film is on Giuliana as a character and her own (lack of) progression through her own illness, is Antonioni’s skillful use of color both to add meaning to particular shots and especially to focus the eye of the audience precisely where he wants it to go. Initially, especially, many of the landscapes may have just as well been filmed in black-and-white. They are soot-covered and virtually all black with flecks of white, and really look like black-and-white photography. And yet, in many of these shots, there is a single point of color—a flame from the top of a large chimney, or Giulianna in a resplendent green coat walking past the factories. Why green? Because at least at that point, Giuliana still exists in a natural world, even though her world is not natural. Her son, who will grow up in this world, is typically dressed in brown and beige. Later in the film, Giuliana dresses in far more neutral colors, switching back to green only at the end, when we also see actual living plants for the first time.

I also love that there is no soundtrack through the film, that our music is instead played by industrial machinery and passing ships. It adds another layer of disconnection from what we are used to both in our everyday life and in our expectation from a film. In essence, it forces us out of our natural world and into one that is artificial by design.

Sadly, this artificiality doesn’t work for everything. Richard Harris is obviously dubbed into the Italian; watching him speak, it’s evident that he’s speaking in English, and this is very disconcerting throughout.

This is the third Antonioni film I have watched, and I find that I like him more and more as I continue to watch his films. L’Avventura, which was alleged to be a revelation, left me somewhat cold. I liked Blow-Up more. Il Deserto Rosso is better still, and it makes me wonder if perhaps I shouldn’t go back and give L’Avventura another shot. No matter. Antonioni’s work here is superlative, and this is a film I will return to and watch very carefully in the future.

Why to watch Il Deserto Rosso: Antonioni…in color.
Why not to watch: The dub on Richard Harris looks really weird.

Oh, Behave!

Film: Blow-Up
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on big ol' television.

There’s a particular fascination people have with fashion. It’s a combination of glamour and the idiocy that seems to come with fashion. The only television show I watch regularly is Project Runway despite the fact that I know nothing about color, clothing, fashion, or style. Movies tend to be intrinsically tied with fashion, too. Movies both reflect the trends of their time and set the style for their time. It’s impossible to divorce particular movie scenes and styles from the fashion of those films. So, it only makes sense that there would be a number of movies involving the fashion world.

Blow-Up (sometimes just Blowup) is perhaps the first and greatest of films that combine cinematic elements with an eye for fashion and fashion photography. Our main character is Thomas (David Hemmings), a young hip photographer who makes his living doing fashion photography even if his heart really isn’t in it. His real goal is to publish a book of his more serious photography, and he leaves a fashion shoot to find some final shots for his book.

He finds as a subject a couple who are apparently quite in love, or are at least pretty amorous while he’s filming them. Eventually, the woman (Vanessa Redgrave) spots him taking pictures and confronts him, wanting the film and the negatives. He demurs, but she tracks him down, evidently willing to do anything to get that film back. This makes Thomas all the more curious about its contents, and he gives her a different roll of film and makes prints of the shots he took of the woman and her lover.

When he looks closely at the shots, it appears to him that there is something more going on than just a woman and a man standing in a park. In one shot, it appears that a hand holding a gun is sticking out from some trees, and in a final shot, it looks like the man’s body is lying half concealed by the hedge. Now, in addition to some real shots to end his book, Thomas has a mystery on his hands that only he has the keys to.

There’s a lot going on in Blow-Up. In his opening shoot, Thomas shoots the model Veruschka (as herself) in one of the steamiest few minutes ever filmed. Moving on, he shoots a collection of five women in various poses, but quickly becomes bored, setting the plot in motion. This scene will look mildly familiar to you—it’s undoubtedly the inspiration for the photographic career of Austin Powers—the conversation with the models, the shouting, etc.

Thomas as a character is fairly misogynist in that women are merely things for him to photograph and sometimes have sex with. His only non-sexual relationship is with his neighbor’s lover (Sarah Miles), and in one particularly aggressive escapade, he has pretty violent foreplay with a pair of young girls (Jane Birkin and Gillian Hills) who want him to photograph him. (On a similar note, Jane Birkin became infamous as the partner and singing partner of Serge Gainsbourg on Je T’aime Moi Non Plus which featured her simulated orgasm. She’s also the namesake of the Hermes Birkin bag.)

The film is framed by a troupe of mimes, but their meaning can’t be discussed without spoiling the film, which means that I can either stop writing or put a few paragraphs under a spoiler warning. Guess which I’m going to do:

*** A REAL SPOILER ***

Thomas goes to the park and finds the body of the man and realizes that the woman has probably been complicit in his murder. When he tries to involve anyone else in discovering what happened, though, he gets nowhere. He goes to the park and sees the body himself, but when he goes back to photograph it, the body is gone. Similarly, his studio gets raided and all the negatives and blown up photographs have been removed.

The mimes at the start of the film seem to indicate that we’ll be treading in territory that borders between reality and non-reality, or actual and filmed life. At the end, the troupe performs a mock tennis match that Thomas observes. When the “ball” goes over the fence, Thomas retrieves it for them and mimes tossing it back to them. Once he does, the mock tennis game resumes, but this time with the actual sounds of two people playing tennis.

It’s an odd moment that seems to imply this same sort of divide between reality and image, or truth and illusion. This appears to be confirmed in the final shot of Thomas standing on the field with his camera, slowly fading out and leaving the field empty.

*** ALL DONE ***

I think this is a film that needs to be watched multiple times to really get. There are a lot of nascent ideas milling around in my brain with this one—the mimes, the connection of the field a the start of the film and again at the end, the seemingly unnecessary presence of The Yardbirds toward the end of the film and the scrum that results from a destroyed guitar. Antonioni packed a lot into this film that requires some thinking and some fermentation.

For all that, Blow-Up is remarkably slow to develop (yes, pun intended). Thomas doesn’t spot the body until about halfway through, and there seem to be some side plots and actions that don’t do much but take up some space. I’m certain that Thomas’s desire to purchase an antique shop and the massive propeller he buys have some specific meaning, but I haven’t ferreted that meaning out yet.

Ultimately, I think I’d like a little less artistic oomph and a little more story earlier on. With repeated viewings, who knows what I’d think?

Why to watch Blow-Up: Sex, drugs, rock and roll, jazz, fashion photography, and possibly murder.
Why not to watch: Despite everything that happens, it’s slow to start.

Missing Persons

Film: Picnic at Hanging Rock, L’Avventura (The Adventure)
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on middlin’-sized living room television (both films).

I’m not prone to gushing about products in general. Something has to be truly exceptional for me to get all mushy-headed about it. If I’m getting exactly what I’m paying for, that’s not really worth laudatory praise. I’m close to giddy with what I’m getting from NetFlix, though. Not only can I get about 80% of the remaining list on NetFlix, I can get a bunch of them instantly on the laptop or through our Wii. Even better, if the movie I want doesn’t appear on the queue for the Wii, I can place it in the queue on the laptop, then watch it through the Wii. Technology is great when it works. Many of the streaming movies feel like odd choices, which is great. It’s not just the newest and biggest—there are plenty of obscure gems on the streaming list. Yesterday, for instance, I watched pretty much all of the Firefly television series, followed by Serenity. This is why I did not update yesterday.

Seeing Picnic at Hanging Rock on the queue was a pleasant surprise. I queued it up while pairing socks, and after a time, I forgot about pairing the socks and instead concentrated on the film. This film is both a great example of a period piece as well as a disturbing mystery. The whole thing centers on the Hanging Rock of the title. This is a massive outcropping of stone vaulting several hundred craggy feet into the air in Australia.

At the turn of the last century, the students and some of the faculty at a British all-girls’ school in Australia plans a day out to visit the rock. They are warned not to get too near it as there are poisonous snakes about as well as nasty ants. Most of the girls go, but Sara (Margaret Nelson) stays at home under the guidance of the school’s owner and mistress, Mrs. Appleyard (Rachel Roberts). It becomes evident that several things are at work here. Sara is opposed to authority, punished because she refused to memorize a particular poem. Sara might be (read: is) rebelling against Mrs. Appleyard’s authority. It’s also quickly evident that Mrs. Appleyard dislikes the young orphan. It’s also quickly evident that Mrs. Appleyard dislikes the young orphan. The reason why is a little trickier.

It’s hinted in the beginning that Sara may be having a lesbian relationship with another girl at the school. This other girl, Miranda (Anne Lambert), is the school treasure, loved by one and all. While Sara sits punished at home and dreaming of her dear Miranda, Miranda and a trio of other girls—Irma (Karen Robson), Marion (Jane Vallis), and Edith (Christine Schuler)—go trekking up the rock, eventually followed by a teacher. Only Edith returns.

This sequence is to my mind the most puzzling as well as the prettiest in the film. The three disappearing girls—Irma, Marion, and Miranda—are all beautiful and depicted as ethereal, almost unearthly. All four of the girls fall into a swoon, but it is the three who, socks and shoes removed, wander away, leaving the pudgy, homely Edith to sit and scream after them.

What happens next is difficult to explain. Two young men who saw the girls walk by are questioned, and their answers feel suspicious, almost forced and badly memorized. One of these young men in particular is obsessed with finding the girls, notably Miranda. It’s notable that he walks off from his friend when the girls go past. Did he follow them? Did he molest them and/or kill them? These questions aren’t answered. Irma shows up a week later, in shock and dehydrated, but otherwise fine. She has no memory of the past week, has no idea how she got where she was found, and cannot recall what happened to the other girls.

What’s hushed up at the school is the fact that Irma returned without her corset, implying strongly that it was removed, further implying the possibility of molestation. Did the young man remove it? Did the other two girls?

The school begins to fall apart at this point. Not only are the girls missing, but many of the parents of the other girls have stated that their children will not be coming back after the end of the term. As her school crumbles around her, Mrs. Appleyard takes out her frustrations on Sara, first claiming that her tuition has not been paid, meaning she can no longer take classes like dance lessons. Second, she says that if the bill is not paid, Sara will be returned to the orphanage, a place that Sara speaks of only in hushed tones.

The end result of all this, in something that has seemed like a theme for what I’ve been watching lately, is a movie that presents a great number of questions and answers none of them. However, unlike those films that present dilemmas that can be discussed and social problems that must be solved, Picnic at Hanging Rock’s questions are simply about itself. Those things left unanswered are the unanswered questions of the mystery surrounding the disappearances. Like so much of real life, there is no resolution here, and the story doesn’t so much end as stop.

*** SPOILER WARNING ***

Miranda, Marion, and their chaperone are never found. Mrs. Appleyard decides that Sara must go back to the orphanage, and on hearing the news, Sara throws herself out a high window into the greenhouse below, killing herself. Mrs. Appleyard claims that the girl’s guardian came for her, but when told of the girl’s death, she is already clad in mourning attire. The film ends with a voiceover stating that Mrs. Appleyard’s body was found a few days later at the foot of Hanging Rock, with the determination that she slipped while climbing it. Did she? Or did she jump? Or was she pushed by the spirits (or reality) of the missing girls?

*** END SPOILERS ***

Ultimately, this is a film that is beautiful, but also frustrating.

We stick with a similar theme with Antonini’s L’Avventura (The Adventure). Two women are going on a five-day boat cruise with a group of people. Anna (Lea Massari) is meeting her boyfriend Sandro (Gabriele Ferzetti), who she hasn’t seen for a month. Her friend is Claudia (Monica Vitti), who is going along for the ride.

Anna’s and Sandro’s relationship is troubled, mostly because of their month-long separation. Anna wants very much to be with him, but complains that she also wants to be alone and without him. Being apart for a month has gotten her used to being alone. In short, she’s confused and doesn’t know what she wants.

On the boat, the group goes for a swim, but one of their number spots a shark. Everyone makes it to an island. After a siesta, the group discovers that Anna is missing without a trace. They scour the island for her, but to no avail. It is as if she has simply disappeared completely.

What happens next is that Claudia and Sandro become intrigued with each other. While they both search for Anna, they discover a mutual attraction that both excites them and fills them with guilt. Claudia attempts to get away from Sandro, but they keep ending up at the same places with the same wealthy, banal people, and eventually, nature simply takes its course. Claudia spends the film happy and guilt-ridden, excited by Sandro and disgusted by his womanizing. She’s guilty not because Anna is missing, but because she is secretly pleased that now Sandro can be hers. At one point, she whispers “Mine…mine…mine…” in his ear as they roll about on the ground.

The biggest knock on this film is that honestly, not that much happens. Anna disappears, Sandro and Claudia attempt to find something together (and may by film’s end), and that’s pretty much it. This emptiness of plot seems to symbolize quite a bit, though, and was certainly intentional by Antonini. For a film that stretches nearly two-and-a-half hours, very little of import seems to happen.

However, this is symbolic of the lives of the people here. While they are all wealthy and seemingly happy, they are also all empty. All, including Anna, Sandro, and Claudia, are burdened with shallow, unfulfilling relationships. All of them appear willing, able, and ready to cheat at the drop of a hat or a skirt. On the surface, it appears like hedonism, but beneath, it doesn’t rise to that level. It’s more like they are all trying to fill up the emptiness of their lives with anything and anyone they can get their hands on. Anna’s disappearance, in fact, doesn’t give them much to live for, either. While Sandro and Claudia appear to be searching diligently for her, this doesn’t stop them from trysts at virtually every possible opportunity.

In short, Anna disappears, and the world of these characters is unchanged. The world would similarly be unchanged if any of these people similarly vanished and were never heard from again. Slow paced, but interesting almost in spite of itself.

Why to watch Picnic at Hanging Rock: Trancey, dream-like qualities and a great story.
Why not to watch: So many untied threads.

Why to watch L’Avventura: Metaphors abound
Why not to watch: Not much happens.