Red Desert
Monica Vitti
Monica Vitti
Red Desrt is hard to find...I purchased it for $90 off amazon. Another one of Antonioni's grim modernist meditations on the neurotic alienation and anxiety caused by our rapid movement into the cold steel jungle of industrial society, Red Desert is held together mostly by the strength and beauty of Monica Vitti's understated performance. We follow her through various degrees of sanity until we arrive at a characteristic non-narrative non-ending in which we realize that the minimalist plot that meandered across this bleak existential stage was largely secondary to the vivid painting of a distressing psychological landscape. Cold, shattered, frustrating, and violently oppressive, the message is that we are rats in a maze of our own creation. Life in this absurdist theatre has no inherent purpose, and we are merely automatons shuffling from one diversion to the next, but ultimately there will be a need to either embrace this absurdity or deny it. As usual, Antonioni offers no answers or guide posts, but instead raises questions that are largely only resolved by the individual in the moment to moment, day to day negotiation of the endless challenges of contemporary urban life. Perhaps it is largely the time and effort invested in overcoming these many stresses and complications that distracts us from the larger void that lurks nearby. And this could in essence be the only solution to the Sisyphian dilemna famously articulated by Camus. Stay busy or go insane.
see also
L'Eclisse
La Notte
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