"Red Desert" is director Michelangelo Antonioni's first color film, and he doesn't hold back. Much like Bergman's "Cries & Whispers" this film proves that a master of b&w medium can be just as impressive and innovative with all the wavelengths between b and w. But I'm getting ahead, first let's have a plot summary:
A woman who is suffering from a nonspecific mental disorder (or as her husband flippantly describes "her gears don't quite mesh") attempts to navigate an increasingly conflicted existence against the backdrop of a town which itself is suffering a conflict of nature vs industrialism. Like Antonioni's 3 prior films with Monica Vitti (L'avventura, La notte, L'eclisse), there are prominent sexual themes but NOT 'sexual' meaning 'erotic' or even 'romantic'. The themes explored are more about the dysfunctional ways in which men and women--primarily the male characters--use sexual attraction as a failed proxy for real human connections.
That's a mouthful, hard to describe in half a paragraph. You'll see it almost immediately in an early scene where Monica's character "Giuliana" is having a terrifying anxiety attack in the middle of the night and her husband initially tries to comfort her with a hug but quickly overshoots the runway and starts making sexual advances on the poor woman. This is something to watch for later in the film when the scenario repeats itself in a different way. Giuliana's reaction is chilling to watch, particularly if you look at her hands as she silently contorts herself in a way that conveys not simply her revulsion at the male's approach but perhaps more of a deep conflict within herself, fighting the very concept of intimacy.
And all the while we see unsettling--but gorgeous--images of nature fighting and losing to industrialism. We see nature replaced with a new "tree line" of smoke stacks and commercial silos. But this is the interesting part: Antonioni doesn't merely bash us over the head with the bumper sticker mentality of "factories suck" but these images are beautiful in their own way, and we are also shown majestic images of radio towers aimed at the sky. "What are those for?" Giuliana asks a worker who is high up on a tower. "So we can listen to the stars," the man joyfully answers. "Can I listen?" Giuliana asks. "Sure, but you have to climb up here." To which she laughs and shakes her head as if that's never gonna happen.
And thus Antonioni paints for us a complex intersection between the old world and the new, or nature vs. science, or tradition vs. progress. There's no simple answer. It's a tangle of complications that makes you start to realize how our protagonist Giuliana--perhaps a representation of humankind itself--may lose her mind under the strain.
A woman who is suffering from a nonspecific mental disorder (or as her husband flippantly describes "her gears don't quite mesh") attempts to navigate an increasingly conflicted existence against the backdrop of a town which itself is suffering a conflict of nature vs industrialism. Like Antonioni's 3 prior films with Monica Vitti (L'avventura, La notte, L'eclisse), there are prominent sexual themes but NOT 'sexual' meaning 'erotic' or even 'romantic'. The themes explored are more about the dysfunctional ways in which men and women--primarily the male characters--use sexual attraction as a failed proxy for real human connections.
That's a mouthful, hard to describe in half a paragraph. You'll see it almost immediately in an early scene where Monica's character "Giuliana" is having a terrifying anxiety attack in the middle of the night and her husband initially tries to comfort her with a hug but quickly overshoots the runway and starts making sexual advances on the poor woman. This is something to watch for later in the film when the scenario repeats itself in a different way. Giuliana's reaction is chilling to watch, particularly if you look at her hands as she silently contorts herself in a way that conveys not simply her revulsion at the male's approach but perhaps more of a deep conflict within herself, fighting the very concept of intimacy.
And all the while we see unsettling--but gorgeous--images of nature fighting and losing to industrialism. We see nature replaced with a new "tree line" of smoke stacks and commercial silos. But this is the interesting part: Antonioni doesn't merely bash us over the head with the bumper sticker mentality of "factories suck" but these images are beautiful in their own way, and we are also shown majestic images of radio towers aimed at the sky. "What are those for?" Giuliana asks a worker who is high up on a tower. "So we can listen to the stars," the man joyfully answers. "Can I listen?" Giuliana asks. "Sure, but you have to climb up here." To which she laughs and shakes her head as if that's never gonna happen.
And thus Antonioni paints for us a complex intersection between the old world and the new, or nature vs. science, or tradition vs. progress. There's no simple answer. It's a tangle of complications that makes you start to realize how our protagonist Giuliana--perhaps a representation of humankind itself--may lose her mind under the strain.