A decaying industrial landscape: Michelangelo Antonioni’s Red Desert

Cinematekene er et samarbeid om felles digitale visninger på cinematekene i Bergen, Kristiansand, Lillehammer, Oslo, Stavanger, Tromsø og Trondheim. Montages setter fokus på filmene i utvalget gjennom ukentlige artikler. Michelangelo Antonionis debutfilm Rød ørken (1964) vises fra og med torsdag 6. februar – sjekk tidspunkter i oversikten hos ditt cinematek.

Chama Al Houari (f. 2002) is an aspiring filmmaker from Morocco. She is currently living in Oslo, and is passionate about film history and how movies reflects the world.

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Do you suffer from an overarching inexplicable modern malaise? No, Michelangelo Antonioni does not offer a solution, but he definitely recognizes your problem!

Red Desert (1964) is a film that could’ve been a novel, that could have been a photograph, or that could have been a song. That is to say it is built around an idea so poignantly universal it could easily translate over to other artforms. However, I am glad that Red Desert is a film, as it is a film about seeing. What we choose to see or ignore around us significantly impacts our lives. As Monica Vitti‘s character Guiliana poignantly states, «I don’t know what to look at.» To which Corrado (Richard Harris) replies, «And I don’t know how to live; it is the same thing.»

The film opens with shots of a decaying industrial landscape, where a mother and her child navigate a world that feels both familiar and alien. The whole environment ranges from a sterilized home, sterile offices, and an empty shop to foggy wastelands, rotting shacks, and rusty ships.

The contrast between sterility and decay possesses an interesting similarity; both are almost colorless, lifeless, and suffocating. This paradoxical yet uniform image that Antonioni paints of modern life is not merely an artistic choice but a commentary on the quiet death of nature in the face of relentless industrial expansion.

The only moment in which the film allows strong colors is during a fleeting sequence in which Guiliana tells her son a story — a tale of a young girl swimming in clear waters, accompanied by an open horizon and the enchanting sound of nature’s mysterious song. This vivid imagery starkly contrasts with her everyday reality, which is devoid of such vibrancy and life. It represents her fantasy, an escape from the oppressive mundanity that anchors her existence.

Guiliana is not well; she is acutely aware of her suffering. Her malaise permeates through the film’s every harrowing frame, deafening sound, and aimless direction. It symbolizes an unspoken, undiagnosed malaise that permeates modern industrialized society. The synchronicity between her internal state of suffocation and the external world she inhabits is immaculate. Guiliana embodies the very essence of what she sees, and helplessly so.

In stark contrast to her entourage of bourgeois industrialists, she engages with her surroundings as the camera becomes her eye, revealing the extent of the destruction surrounding her. In this world, nature has been relegated to the margins, and the beauty that once thrived is now but a distant memory, swallowed by the relentless march of progress.

Guiliana takes this decayed world as part of herself, a world where something is clearly wrong, yet no one seems willing to acknowledge it. The result is a profound sense of loneliness and alienation. She exists in a foggy predicament, the source of which is impossible to pinpoint; Guiliana herself is unable to comprehend her own suffering. Each time she attempts to articulate her plight, she inevitably succumbs to frustration, only to be met with dismissive platitudes: «Love your fellow man,» or «Just don’t think about.»

Such empty words only deepen her sense of isolation, making her feel unheard and invalidated. Her suffering is a woman’s unheard and dismissed agony, lost amidst the cacophony of a world that prioritizes progress over empathy.

While masterfully creating an anxiety-inducing atmosphere through sound design and camera angles looming over the characters heads like doom, Antonioni’s question becomes clearer: in a decaying world where nothing is clear, what exactly is the problem? Who is to blame? What could be the solution? To escape? Or to simply look away?

There exists within Guiliana a maddening feeling of suffocation, coupled with an overwhelming desire to escape. Yet, where can she go when the very essence of nature has been erased, replaced by structures and systems that seem to choke the very air she breathes? The answer lies in the irrational fear of illness that haunts her, a fear that mirrors the decay of her surroundings. This fear manifests in her psyche, creating a barrier that further isolates her from the world and from herself.

In this context, escapism emerges as the only solution to an unbearable dullness. Guiliana’s fantasies of swimming in clear waters reveal her deep yearning for liberation from the lifeless landscape that surrounds her. Yet, how does one escape when the very surroundings are so completely decayed and unrecognizable from nature? When the natural world has been replaced with concrete and machinery, how does our psyche adapt? The internal and external landscapes become mismatched; the chaos within Guiliana reflects the chaos of the world outside.

The film encapsulates a crucial question: how do we navigate our lives when our surroundings no longer resonate with the rhythms of nature? The industrialized world, with its relentless demands and soulless environments, fosters a collective malaise that is often left unaddressed.

The characters in Red Desert are trapped in a loop, caught between the desire to escape and the realization that escape may be impossible. In this decaying milieu, Guiliana’s struggle becomes an allegory for the broader human experience, a reflection of our contemporary discontent.

The final question becomes, why do some of us bear the burden of maladjustment heavier than others? Why is it easier for some to look away or simply not think about it, while others seem to be more attuned to the troubles of the world? In a predicament where the problem of systemization is almost impossible to grapple with yet alone solve, is it maybe wiser to turn our gaze to more productive endeavours? Or will the malaise only suffocate us further if left unaddressed?

Antonioni leaves us with Guiliana’s final exchange with her son; the birds, they have learnt to fly around the toxic fumes.

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