Red Desert (1964)

Unfortunately, Red Desert is the last Antonioni film I'm likely to see for a while, as I've exhausted all of his available films. It's considered one of his best, yet isn't out on DVD, save for an over-expensive OOP Image release, that seems to have a print run of dozens. It's strange, I really love most of it, but some parts of it left me a little cold.

Its opening credits are underlined with music that initially sounds very alien, almost as it was ripped from a sci-fi film. Yet, as we listen, we discover it's just normal machinery echoing in a factory. A woman warbles a tune, but she does it in a way that she sounds like a theremin, which of course is the instrument of choice for creating otherworldly soundtracks. This, I think is the theme of Red Desert, shown simply in the music of the opening credits; a modern, mechanized world that serves only to completely alienate. Yes, if this sounds familiar, it's pretty much the theme of EVERY SINGLE ANTONIONI FILM. Yet, he pulls it off so well that we forgive ol' Mike.

Antonioni uses a lot of very warm colors, which serve the Desert aspect of the film, but also add to the alienating effect of the film, somehow. The lighting seems to be very atypical. Everytime I'd see Monica Vitti in her distracting brunette wig, I can't help but wonder how a different director would have lit her, more glamorously, for sure. In fact, her entire performance, wig aside, is great, and most likely the best of hers that I've seen. It's incredibly nuanced, as you try to figure out if she's 'okay', if we're witnessing hallucinations or skewed events, how she's going to take things. Slowly, as the film goes on, we realize that we're witnessing a mental collapse of her character, as she acts more and more irrationally. The climax, I think, is a brilliant moment where the fog envelops all of the characters, as you see them all slowly fade away, as if they're ghosts of something that Giuliana will never have; comfort, understanding and closeness.

I think that Corrado is an atypical Antonioni male. Yes, he doesn't understand for the most part, and ends up using Giuliana (I think?), but Antonioni seemed to imbue him with a lot of his own traits and his own emotions. He does this in all of his pictures, but it's almost always with the women and very rarely with the men. Yet, when Corrado makes his speech, illustrating how progress is more important in today's world, than justice, I can't help but imagining the celebrated director putting himself up on the screen.

The drug scene, or what I believe is the drug scene, is strange, to me. It seems kind of out of place, and the characters all seem to act very erratically. Maybe it's Antonioni's way of showing how we fill the voids within ourselves, with things like possessions and drug experiences. But, I didn't really care much for the whole sequence, though it does have its nice moments, especially Vitti's acting, where she displays her character's inability to connect and her further breakdown.

The drug scene, and the final 'love' scene between Corrado and Giuliana, the best way I can describe them is grotesquely erotic. They're sexy and enticing, visually and mentally stimulating and tantalizing, yet at the same time, it's horrible to watch and seems to be disgusting. The scene between Corrado and Giuliana is great, though, because it's very abstract, both visually and thematically. I felt my brain working feverishly to try to figure out, not only what was going on onscreen, but what it meant and why it was happening. It's sad that, these days, films very rarely let you think about things for yourself, and work things out on your own, because, personally, I love that.