antonioni calling \/\/ and (re)calling?
I just viewed Michelangelo Antonioni’s early masterwork about the decadent boredom of rich Italians, L’Aventurra, while eating Taco Bell and drinking Coronas.
When it debuted at Cannes in 1959, the film was vilified then embraced in astonishing alacrity. The first screening resulted in such lusty booing and cat-calling that Antonioni and his breathtaking star, Monica Vitti, fled the theater. The second screening yielded the Jury Prize and a call by a number of prominent critics (young Pauline Kael among them) for viewers to reassess the film.
Our star, back-lit.
Although the film lacks a conventional plot or pacing and sets up a mystery that doesn’t approach solution, it’s still mesmerizing. Everything is presented with such self-assurance—the dialogue, the acting, the cinematography, the editing, tempo, the music—that it’s apparent there’s more going on than Antonioni tossing unnecessarily indulgent yards of film depicting a yachting party wandering a wind-swept island for their lost friend at the audience. Although at first glance, that’s what seems to be going on. I can understand why that first audience blew a fat raspberry at Michelangelo. In between bites of bean burrito, I wondered aloud at what percentage of the movie would be different shots of our rich friends walking unsteadily on the crag, then shouting for lost Anna.
But this is the type of film that begs for a re-viewing. The shots and sequences Antonioni chooses are saturated with symbols, motifs, and foreshadowings that you can only get the second time around. The first trip through L’Aventurra you absorb the images. In the second trip, you start to understand what Antonioni was up to. Oh, that little boat, was Anna spirited away on it?
The film requires two linear run-throughs. At least, that seems to be the intention because there were no rewind buttons in 1959.
I wonder about the psychology of rewinding. Back in Antonioni’s heyday, he could be assured that his audience would have to experience his film linearly. But with the advent of the VCR, then the DVD player, and now films in digital formats, the audience has the capability to experience the film in any order that it wants. Once I’m certain that Anna’s disappeared, I can rewind and scour the island sequences looking for clues before continuing on with the film. I can jump ahead to the end and see if they find her. I can fast forward through all the seemingly indulgent shots and shorten the movie by 45 minutes (while deleting its languorous magic).
But I don’t do that. I don’t know anyone who does. I just don’t engage with the filmic text in that way. With books, I occasionally flip around and ignore the linearity, but it’s not common practice.
Antonioni liked the film the back of people's heads, often symbolizing miscommunication.
At what point, if ever, will our brains be able to engage with texts in this zig-zagging way? As readers and viewers from birth, we’re trained to experience certain things linearly. Books, movies, songs. Twelve-step programs. Work your way up the ladder.
But what about kids experiencing digital and internet zig-zagging/sprawling in equal measure as linear reading and viewing? Instead of watching L’Aventurra in a couple of two hour and twenty minute sittings, will they experience it in a single two hour splice-and-dice session?
To navigate the near endless bounds of the digital world, you learn quickly to evaluate and ignore any material you deem unnecessary. You branch off quickly from your initial queries and approach subjects from multiple angles. In reading up on L’Aventurra, I browsed IMDB, visited Roger Ebert’s site twice, brushed up quickly on Italian neo-realism, Pauline Kael, and L’Aventurra’s reception at Cannes. I ignored an article about the guy who played the body in Blow-Up, although Ebert mentions him as well, a not-so-strange coincidence. I ignored quotes from Antionini but took note of his birthdate (1912) and the number of films he directed before L’Aventurra (17).
In short, I approached this casual inquiry in a typically digital non-linear way. Will younger generations who grow up on e-readers and internet short videos eventually diminish their desire or ability to consume information/entertainment in linear ways? Why do videogames outpace movies in profits these days?
What will the digital revolution bring? Will London drown?
Has anyone made it to the end of this column?
Photo credits: albertogallo, micheleroohani
Totally fantastic post, Tyler.
I feel like I’m practically autistic and likely need adderall at this point: I used to be a huge cinephile and now going to the movies feels like a panic attack. I get nervous when I can’t click on a mouse because I find linear progression sort of overwhelming. What do you mean that I can’t go on IMDB and look at a director’s archive? I swear this f*cking actress was in another film I saw, what was it again? The worst part of it is that at almost 30, I can’t be nearly as bad as someone who has spent their entire life on the web.
Then again, I think that taking film classes in college also must have contributed to the phenomenon: a film major friend of mine told me she hadn’t watched a movie straight through in the theatre since she started slicing and dicing them in class for the sake of analysis. At the same time, I wonder if the digital age has made us any more analytical.
I made it to the end, but I took my pants off midway.
I guess I’m still on the linear end of the spectrum still. I only interrupt theater-going movies to urinate.
So it’s not a generational thing. Muy interesante. I didn’t want to sound like an old codger cursing those damn kids and their internet because that’s not what it’s about. It’s about how we interact with digital media influencing how we interact with other media.
And it seems that once you slice and dice film, you don’t view it as a “complete” media anymore.
My born-digital grandchildren complain bitterly when we don’t have Direct TV, which allows them to stop, start, rewind, replay, etc.,etc. for a different viewing experience of their animated movies. As I think about it, they listed to digital music in utero, so they were pre-born digital. About the only way I get this experience is to actually go to a theatre where I leave control behind. It’s a much more aesthetic, visual experience when I can’t look up things and compulsively multitask. I must say, however, that fewer and fewer widely released films warrant my undivided attention these days.
I also don’t tend to interrupt films at the theatre, but I’ve definitely noticed that I’m a lot more fidgety now that I spend 12 hours a day online. Film is also such a multifaceted production involving so many different people that it’s always been challenging for me to perceive it as a singluar effort, so maybe being digitally connected has just highlighted what I had felt all along.
I’m holding Flava’s pants…sigh.
Flava looking like Winnie the Pooh + Paul PopOp holding discarded pants = scenario that will play over and over in my head when I am hungover at work for the rest of my damn life.