July 31, 2007
AND ANOTHER
Wow. Yesterday saw the death of two of the absolute greatest film directors. Is there anyone else other than Resnais and Godard left that can be considered in their class? (Won't that be a hell of an ending the day Godard goes?) I don't even know where to begin with this one. Antonioni was the person that made me fall in love with film. And I mean real love. L'Avventura was the culprit. Never before had a film aggravated me so much. I distinctly recall the anger I felt forty minutes into it. It all seemed pointless. The characters were awful people. The scenes were slow and meandering. But still, it was those people! I had no sympathy for them and could not understand why Antonioni would force me to experience their search for their lost "friend". Fuck her and fuck them. The boos during its screening at Cannes validates my feelings. But it was film class and I had to finish it. Yet a week after I finished watching it, I could not stop thinking about it. I still can't. The search itself was the point of that scene. The feelings I had were likely shared by the characters. Antonioni takes into consideration the fact that we are viewing the actions from afar but manages to work with many levels of phenomenology at the same time. Antonioni takes into consideration the story, the characters, and the spectator. This sheer depth is one of the many miracles of an Antonioni film. This might seem like a fluff piece but then ask anyone else who has seen this. And ask those people that jeered. Cinema was forever changed and they were the people who reported it.
I have previously made a post of my favorite images from motion pictures. I will recall the final shot from L'Avventura. It still packs a whallup. It is a perfect depiction of self made despair and a visual metaphor for the emotions residing within the characters. The ever extending wall shows us how Sandro will never reach his dreams of becoming an architect, developing emotion, or connecting to another person. Mount Etna offers a glimmer of hope (perhaps) of Claudia potentially having something still inside, waiting to come out.
It is kind of funny that I wrote about the end of my trilogy dealing with the motifs of Ingmar Bergman. The first story I started is based on Antonioni's work of love, social isolationism, and the modern malaise. It is an autobiographical story of the last time I loved someone. A long, long time ago. She was my Monica Vitti.
What was so special about the films these auteurs made was that they were so deep and personal that they offered something much more than entertainment. I learned a lot about life through them. I still find myself in the artistic school of thought that believes that art has to be created with monumental importance in mind. True art has to pursue truth. The eternal ambiguity of it just happens to make it fun. This is now a thing of the past and it is sad to see so much garbage thrown at us daily.
I found a great quote from a collection of short stories and film ideas Antonioni wrote:
"All men who look at death are the same man. But it's an identity that lasts only for that look, the first gesture annuls it."
What a fucking gesture.
The English version of the book is entitled, That Bowling Alley on the Tiber.
Posted by Fran at July 31, 2007 10:07 AM