Red Desert

Antonioni is one of the strongest visual artists in film history and he’s also the master of exploring disillusionment. In his earlier 60s films the sense of being uneasy without knowing the cause sits right under the surface of the characters and sometimes bubbles up. In La Notte, especially, he focuses on people who appear to have things under control still feeling that tumult within. Ultimately we also get pretty tidy conclusions and ideas for how to free ourselves from this curse of the human condition. In Red Desert the theme is far less subtly explored and it is all consuming of Vitti’s character. She discusses it openly for basically the entire film. I chuckle to say this but Antonioni is being highly expository here in a way that surprised me. I think it works wonderfully. We relate to Vitti’s anxiety and experience in the first hour via her character’s vocal over-sharing (for lack of a better word) nature and can easily connect the things that are driving her behavior and feelings to our own anxiety persona, whatever level of control that may have over us individually. That creates a kind of magical third act because you can so easily predict what she is going to do and say. We understand that we are along for the ride with Antonioni to explore where all-consuming uneasiness with ourselves and the world leads. The answer is as unsatisfying as all of the ineffective remedies Vitti tries. More uneasiness, more anxiety. You just try to learn to avoid the things that cause you problems. Like the birds.  Red Desert is bleak but honest. When a filmmaker reaches into the most uncomfortable part of the human psyche and twists on it, they can either lie to you like a child or empathize with you like an adult. Antonioni is here to say “yeah, shit sucks. Not sure we can do anything about that.”