Red Desert

1964 sci-fi drama

Rating: 17/20

Plot: A woman goes crazy in an industrialized world.

Maybe it's because I'm a little stupid, but I don't get why this movie is called Red Desert. Can somebody explain that to me? I'm too lazy to look that up on my own, and I'm definitely too lazy to actually think about it.

Michelangelo Antonioni has sculpted himself a science fiction character study here. More accurately, being his first color film, he's painted it. If Monica Vitti wasn't so alluring, the colors might be considered the star of the movie here. There are combinations here that were like abstract paintings, pictures reminiscent of Mark Rothko. There's a real beauty to the fuzzy industrial backgrounds, the colorful maze of pipes, the machinery, the pollution pouring into the clouds. I'm not kidding when I say this is a sci-fi flick. The visuals have a surreal futuristic quality even though they're all real factories and backgrounds that existed in the early-60's when this was filmed. But the opening scene, one with this squelching synthesizer and these rhythmic sounds, sets it all up as something alien. A child's robotic plaything, a gyroscopic toy top, and the idea that 1+1 can equal 1 keep things in this vaguely science fiction world. And those sounds! Everything is angry!

Vitti's character is almost like an visitor to an alien planet from the opening. A large chunk of this movie is devoted to showing us all this smudgy, imperceptible background surrounding a clearly-focused Vitti. Her story begins in media res though we later learn of a car crash that has affected her more psychologically than physically. Well, I have bad news for her--that car was a rocket, and she's a baffled and battered astronaut with a crew consisting of a little kid and a goofy robot. "I have to think that everything that happens to me is my life. That's all. I'm sorry," she says. You don't have to apologize to us, Monica Vitti! You just let your hair do its thing, intermingle with the shapes and those colors. That clash is a visual metaphor for the clash between Vitti's character, a woman who is feeling, and the callous and unsympathetic industrial world she's wandering around completely lost in. Vitti's performance is a little all over the place, likely intentionally. The character's in a stupor one moment and then in a fit of lunacy in another. And watch her physicality in a sex scene, her hands contorting, her body twisting around like she's the alien visitor. The crazed lady foreplay was almost irresistible, but like a real pro, I resisted pressing my penis against the screen.

What to make of these other characters? The husband is around. Richard Harris throws me off by speaking in Italian in a voice that clearly isn't his. It makes you wonder why Antonioni insisted on having Richard Harris in the movie at all unless he was just a fan of "MacArthur Park" like everybody else and wanted an explanation of what happened to that cake.  And then there's the son with his legs that suddenly stopped working. That happened to me once, right around when I was the same age as the kid. I just woke up without functioning legs, and I stayed at the hospital for about a week with doctors who couldn't tell my parents anything about my condition. I read Conan comics my dad brought me and went home being able to use my legs like I always had. So what the hell was that about? Was I faking it the whole time? Did my robot tell me to do it?

Is this about adapting to a changing world or the effects of an industrial world? Antonioni hinted, or maybe he just flat out insisted, that it was about the former. Embrace the industrialization of the planet, kids. Throw your arms around it like it's Richard Harris.

Either way, I think I might start smoking a pipe. I think it looks cool. That has nothing to do with this movie as I don't believe any character actually smokes a pipe.

One visual I really liked in this involved smoke swallowing up characters. Fog as isolation or vice versa.