Summary:
After a woman goes missing, her boyfriend and best friend form a search party to try to find her.
My Thoughts:
Of all the series that we do at TMM, the World Tour series is by far my favorite. It forces me to grow as a cinephile by making me go out of my way to see films I might not have seen otherwise. This film, Michelangelo Antonioni’s “L’Avventura”, was one of the films I watched for our Italy leg of the journey. I had previously watched a couple of Antonioni’s films (“Blow Out”, which I thought was decent, and “The Passenger”, which I thought was just short of a masterpiece), so he was already a director I was interested in, but this series gave me an excuse to check out what has frequently been to referred to as Antonioni’s masterpiece.
An Ingmar Bergman (“Persona”) quote was what really drove me to watch more of Antonioni’s films. The quote stated that Antonioni was, essentially, on his way to becoming great, but expired on the way due to his own tediousness. I don’t know if I’d ever go so far as to call this film tedious, but if I were to have any issues the Antonioni films I have seen, I would agree with Bergman’s assessment that the faults lie with the length. The pacing issues, however, should not deter the average cinephile from checking out this director (if you’ve braved Tarkovsky (“Andrei Rublev”) then this is nothing). As far as direction, cinematography, themes, and writing, this movie is inches from perfect. I just feel as if Antonioni could’ve trimmed fifteen to twenty minutes and he’d have achieved the same emotional impact. This film is very good, to call it a masterpiece is not out of the realm of possibilities, but for my personal tastes, the film was a touch slow as far as pacing.
“Who needs beautiful things, Claudia? How long will they last?”
While vacationing on a yacht in the Mediterranean, a young girl named Anna (Lea Massari, “Murmur of the Heart”) goes missing. Anna’s lover Sandro (Gabriele Ferzetti, “The Night Porter”) and her best friend Claudia (Monica Vitti, “L’Eclisse”) search eagerly for Anna, but as the search becomes more and more hopeless, they turn to each other for comfort.
Side Note: I really feel like it will be difficult to talk about this film without talking about how it relates to a few other films. This first paragraph will briefly go over this film spoiler free, while the lower section will talk about some spoilers for a few films.
I think the cinematography in this film is absolutely gorgeous; it’s some of the most beautiful black and white cinematography I’ve ever seen. As far as acting goes, everyone does a fine job, though Monica Vitti was the standout. I think the story this film tells is beautiful and tragic, and it also is layered enough that I feel like I would benefit from multiple viewings. If you like foreign cinema and don’t mind slower paced dramas, then you’ll probably enjoy this quite a bit.
Alright. Now for the spoilery bits.
(Spoilers follow for “L’Avventura”, mild spoilers for “The Passenger”, “La Dolce Vita”, and “Picnic at Hanging Rock”)
While I didn’t love this movie as much as I did Antonioni’s “The Passenger”, I found that both films wrestled with many of the same issues of isolation, apathy, boredom, loneliness, and a yearning to know something unknowable. In “The Passenger,” Jack Nicholson’s (“The Shining”) character Locke reaches a point in his life where he simply no longer cares about the life he was living, and decides to fake his own death. In this film, Anna goes missing, but we never really know for sure if she was somehow killed, or if, as her father suspects, Anna just ran away. If we accept the theory that Anna purposely fled from her best friend and boyfriend, then it furthers the themes of isolation and human indifference to others’ suffering. Anna’s own indifference then becomes the catalyst that sends Sandro and Claudia spiraling into darkness.
When doing a smidge more research for my review of this film, I found that upon its initial release, “L’Avventura” had drawn comparisons to Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita”, which came out the same year, and dealt with similar themes (human indifference and the seeming meaningless of certain events in our lives). Those comparisons are well grounded, though I would say that the latter half of this movie reminded me far more of Fellini’s hectic masterpiece than the former, and the comparisons that could be made stretch only as far as theme. Both films tend to speak to the loneliness of the human condition, and both films touch on how even those who claim to love us most can let us down. While the themes were similar, I found I preferred the flamboyant, unharnessed energy of Fellini’s film to Antonioni’s somber meditative approach. Where “La Dolce Vita” spends its time dazzling the viewer with exciting vignettes of busy Rome streets, parties and nightlife, “L’Avvenura” uses sparsely populated landscapes with minimal extras to evoke the same themes. Funnily enough, I found that both films had scenes that were incredibly similar.
There’s a scene in “La Dolce Vita” where the protagonist, Marcello (played by Marcello Mastroianni, “8 ½”) runs into Maddelena (Anouk Aimee, “Lola”) at a party. Marcello and Maddelena have been having an affair, though neither party has been faithful. Both of them, wrapped up in the moment, confess their love for each other, though as they do this, they separate and play a game of hide and seek. Because the acoustics of the room allow the two to continue talking, even when they cannot see each other. In separate areas, the two continue to profess their love, but even as they do this, Maddelena finds a different person at the party, and throws herself into the other person’s arms. In “L’Avventura” there is a very similar sequence near the end of this film. After Claudia and Sandro have been searching for Anna for quite some time, they end up staying in a hotel, where Sandro professes his love for Claudia. Claudia, half-delighted and half-confused by Sandro’s confession, doesn’t quite know what to think, and demurs his proposal. The following day, Claudia seems to have reconsidered her stance on Sandro, but when she goes searching for Sandro, she finds him in the arms of another woman. I think both Fellini and Antonioni were trying to address the state of man’s compassion towards one another. They bring to light the sad fact that there are those that say they care about you, and then they turn around and casually betray you as if it’s nothing to fuss about.
Another film I was heavily reminded of throughout the early part of this film was Peter Weir’s “Picnic at Hanging Rock”, which focuses on the disappearance of a group of girls in Australia. The girls in “Picnic” are never found, and the characters spend a great deal of time wandering about the landscape, looking for any clues as to where the girls might’ve gone. I am sure that “L’Avventura” was a huge influence on “Picnic at Hanging Rock” (which came out in 1975). Everything from the shots of the landscape, to the pervasive eeriness, to the uncertainty of the searches conclusions feels similar, though “Picnic” feels far more tense, while again, “L’Avventura” feels more meditative.
Verdict:
I really enjoyed this film, but I didn’t love it. I think I still preferred Antonioni’s “The Passenger” to this movie, but I do think that “L’Avventura” is absolutely worth watching. This film is gorgeous to look at, and the subtle symbolism Antonioni weaves into every shot is impressive beyond belief. If fifteen minutes of this movie would’ve been trimmed, I think that really would’ve helped the pacing, but as it is, it is a very good film.
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