MICHELANGELO ANTONIONI and TONINO GUERRA’S RED DESERT “There’s something terrible about reality…”

 by James Clark

      Those of you who have been charting the trilogy designed by film writer extraordinary, Tonino Guerra, probably realize that an arc of ascending intensity has been put into action. Though intensity is its business, the intimacy of the crisis has a very subtle presence. Each of the protagonists undergoes humiliation in face of a state-of-affair beyond their wit and gut. (This matter had been a fixture of filmmaker, Ingmar Bergman; and his presence here is everywhere.)

As we test the water of “what next,” it only gets more formidable. It only gets more formidable because from time immemorial the powers that be, have chosen to either the ways of forced (imaged) immortality or the overrated ways of science. There is another way, but it requires some preparation. Our film today, with its springboard of the trilogy, studies most closely a figure, namely, Giuliana, having become, by force of a car accident, a most reluctant pariah. The shock of her near death (without serious injury) had introduced to her an intensity unknown and unwanted. Her patrician assets, though, carry a background of being special, being, if not bright, reckless. A more canny victim would shake it off. But Giuliana, with an appetite to the more, cannot fully face down her new, terrible love of a wisdom. The saga of the uncanny is a staple within Guerra’s poetic intensity.

Giuliana’s innovation affords a glimpse of a dimension needed to be engaged. She’s far from a sage; but she’s also engaged in serious toil. Her toils are far from academic. But they deliver a statement to us, meaningful in their urgency. In the midst of her husband’s massive industrial concern, with its regular strikes, and regular pestilence, our protagonist wends her way to provide, as best she can, her energies of the mundane along with her energies of the extreme unique. We find her walking with her young son, Valerio, close to her home. Her home being an adjunct of her husband’s business. She and Valerio ignore those troubles. She approaches the outing as a safari, an exotic shake-up. With the actions agog by the conflict, what does, though, by way of her very ill of ease, is the sandwich of one of the watchers. “Can I buy it?”/ “But I’ve already eaten some…”/ “It doesn’t matter…” (In fact, the exercise involves getting close to the man in the street.) She grabs the purchase and eats the sandwich as if she were a worker. She is, in fact, acting out some kind of solidarity. Not so much a political connection, but a leaver of universal understanding. Moreover, right from the first second of the film, there are blurring visuals of the entities on tap, the trees, the sky, the factory. This blur is not about a foggy moment of Giuliana’s entrance to the filthy business of her husband’s enterprise; but about a moment of her entrance to an uncanny force—calling her to help!

  

Instead of strictly following the story in its “reality,” we take up another incident, where she and the boy display “fantasy.” Valerio miffed that his father is away on business—he loving his father for his fertility in gadgetry; and finding Giuliana a drag with her preferences to the arts—fakes a bout of polio. In the days before the bogus is discovered, the boy, momentarily sated with science, demands a story from her. The story she delivers has the possibility of crushing the smugness of smarts. Can she sustain what she’s begun?

“There was a girl who lived on an island.” [A private island.] “Grown-ups bored her and frightened her too. She didn’t like kids her own age. They all pretended to be grown-ups. So, she was always alone… with the seagulls and wild rabbits…” (Sands and rocks. Then we see her swimming along sandy shorelines and the pristine sea.) “She discovered a small beach, far from home.” (Far from home, on a private island.) “… with crystal-clean water and pink sand… She loved that spot. The colors of nature were so beautiful.” [Uncanny to a point.] “There was no noise. She comes ashore. She lies on the beach. She sits up. The waters and the sands. Uncanny play of water. She’d leave only when the sun did too…” (We get the impression that she’s sitting, not only on the beach, but on millions of dollars. A wisdom and a lack of full disclosure. Her shadow on the sunny beach, which needed more attention…) “One morning a sailing ship appeared.” (She on the sands, though, racing the usual boats that passed by.) “This was a real sailing ship. The wind became powerful. It had braved stormy seas all over the world. Who knows, maybe beyond…” (Here another of our protagonists making unearthly twists. The poet in the film, L’Eclisse, for instance; or the jaywalker, in La Notte; or the rock-climbers, in, L’Avventura. But this thought of Giuliana takes the cake. For her do go that far involves, “some preparation!”) “She swims toward the ship. Seen from afar, it was a splendid sight. But up close, it took a mysterious air.” [Notice that Giuliana had shifted her take on the uncanny. That, as we’ll see, is our protagonist to a T. How many others piss away their best?] “There was no one around. It paused for a few minutes, and then sailed off. A deep mystery, untouched. Danger and fear. She had seen the problematic. A problematic which won’t make serious sense on Earth. Back on shore, she heard singing, high-pitched, uncanny… One mystery is all right, but two is too much.” [One mystery is like Valerio, and his toys. Two mysteries are like Valerio and his toys.] “A beckoning. An obligation. Who was singing? The beach was singing.” (Recall the end of the film, L’Eclisse.) The neighborhood, as it were, had taken over the protagonist. Briefly. Sometimes near, sometimes far. At one point it seemed to come from the sea itself. She rushes into the sea. The musical tone becomes flat. A pan upon a long difficult terrain.

    Giuliana, like millions of others, has noticed that the portrait of normality is flawed. The portrait of normality requires the addition of the uncanny. Not as an occasional game, but the equal of the nuts and bolts, amenable to syntheses.   Rather than pursue an improvement, they’ve capitulated to vicious stupidity. The saga of Giuliana brings to bear a touch of our planet’s becoming a dead planet. However, those who continue to strive, have a valid basis in the entirety of the cosmos.

Her history of disaster allows a little rally. Accompanying a visiting friend of Ugo, her husband (a name more apt for a machine), she bumps into a man who was a patient in the hospital when she was. Whereas, as we’ll revisit again, she attempted to commit suicide there, the man overcame his crash. As it turns out, the work he does involves a massive (another massive concern; but far from Ugo’s) radio telescope. (He eventually embraced the transcendence; she couldn’t, leaving her a relic.) The structure has been set out as if a long metal series of crescents. Other components dot the area even higher. Those attending to the adjustments require great agility. Twisting, a la Vittoria, in L’Eclisse. For the moment, she is in her homeland. She yells, “May I ask you something?”/ “Go right ahead!”/ “Who owns all this?” (Wrong question… A more trenchant question follows: “Aren’t you scared up there?”/ “No I’m used to it.” A form of twisting becoming routine. Only one of the hurdles. He tells her the telescope listens to the stars. “May I listen?”/ “You have to climb up here.”/ “Oh…”

    Ugo admits to the friend, a friend like Ugo in many ways, that his shiny universe has that flaw in Giuliana. “It was a tremendous shock, more than anything. She spent over a month in the hospital. But there were “just a few bruises…” His position was, “the gears still don’t quite mesh…” Harmony, in this matter, is not for Ugo’s. The friend, Corrado, having seen a glimpse of the flawed patrician, was of a mind to find more than gears and their failings.

They meet more meaningly, later in the day, at her shop—at this point her shop being merely thinking up what color to use—a symptom of her disarray. On to the radio telescope, where there was an appointment for him to attempt to find a foreman for a project of his, in Patagonia. (Though his actions there also fail [the worker happy at his assignment at the telescope]; unlike Giuliana, he does eventually find success in the right man for the job.) The route to his unusual enterprise is bizarre. But her enterprise is far more bizarre, especially in view of the planet she’s stuck with.

    How tough the sledding her work has become? Corrado, unwitting shows us. She walks into the rather goofy question—perhaps, though, a snare— “Are you a leftist or a rightist?” He replies, “Why do you ask such a question?” (And also, perhaps here, another run of being “normal.”) The good listener asks, “Are you interested in politics?”/ “Good Lord, no. I was just wondering…”/ He chuckles, “It’s like asking, ‘What do you believe in?’ Those are big words that call for precise answers…” (He imagines that she hasn’t a clue about the subject. And though, however, she is the equivalent of a master of ontological reflection—and still out to sea—there are many moments seen here in this film, of her being close to madness.) She encourages his banality with her body-language. “Deep-down, one doesn’t really know what one believes in. One believes in humanity in a certain sense… a little less injustice… a little more progress…” (Here she shows a quick sneer.) Onward and upward, with, “One believes in socialism… What matters is to act as one thinks right—right for oneself and for others. In other words, with a clear conscience… Mine is at peace. Does that answer your question?” In response we see her legs, being freezing (the discussion occurring in a bog where they wait for others of the patrician type, staging a private brothel). She does a little dance to get worm. Not a joyous dance, like the twist—full of promise in the string of Guerra’s majestic wit.

There are two more encounters to ponder for these two. Now it’s her turn to become a bore. She’s intent to know, “What are you taking with you to Patagonia? I mean your things, personal belongings.” /She is aghast to hear that the answer is, “Nothing… two or three bags…” Though she admires his dash, she makes a point of needing, that if she were in that situation, “I’d take everything! Everything I see. All the things I use everyday.” (That being a crushing capitulation of her feisty youth on the island. Here being dedicated to the canny, the mundane. Her becoming crazed for safety, as he was crazed for tepid order. In Corrado there was a lead-pipe sensibility toward the tepid. In Giuliana, storms of various intensity never stop and never reach a balance. “Even the ashtrays.” He argues, “Then you might as well stay put. You just end up missing everything.” Her malady races apace. “You see classified ads: ‘For Sale. Owner must relocate…’ As if it were an exercise to abandon everything, or almost. Why? It shouldn’t be like that. How can you predict what you’ll need… things and people you leave behind? Will they be there when you go back? And will they be the same? (The steel rods of the ship he resolves to take a long way.) “How can you predict what you’ll need. And the things and people most important?” His retort is, “Maybe you don’t go back.” (Maybe you hope becoming braver, somehow.) “If I were to leave, never to return, I’d take you with me too…If Ugo had looked at me the way you have these few days, he’d have understood lots of things.”/ “About the accident?” (She nods, “Yes.” But she’s barking up the wrong tree.)

The third and final conclave discloses many instances of graphic tonality. It begins with the dirty trick by Valerio. On concluding her fertile story of the “maybe beyond,” she races to Corrido’s rental flat. (We know that, during his pep-talk to the hands going south, the most vivid moment, was hundreds of large globular glass containers. Real balls not in sight.) So, even with tortuous coitus, we have another bust. The tonality, though, commences to deliver. She comes to him by way of blurting out to the concierge, “Corrado…” (When even routine has been erased. Hearing the shockwave of “309,” she comes to that number, clinging to the doors, and finally holding the entity she wants. She had staggered to him. She says, “He doesn’t need me.” That would be plural. It would also be bathos, melodrama. Where, in the skies or upon the earth will her timbre make a stand from out of her impressive resources? Her touching a brick plant is another bad step. And also blurting out, “I’d like everyone who’s ever cared about me… here around me now, like a wall.” And lastly, “I didn’t, I didn’t get better. I’ll never get better.)

    After so many faux pas on Corrado’s weakness, he pulls himself together to make a quite brilliant statement: “You brood on your illness.” / “But it’s just an illness like any other. We all suffer a bit…” Whereas the standard Corrado is in force, here, grabbing simplistic ease, he manages (one of those tonal twists we all, for a moment, surprise ourselves with), embracing discovery that the elements are far from impossible. Her family is shit? So, what! Her gig is somewhere else; but her gig could find a lot to love right here. She’ll blubber, “I wonder if there’s some place in the world where people go to get better.” / “Probably not,” is his position. (Ever think about cleaning up your own mess?) / “We run around and around, but end up the as before…”/ She adds, “That’s what’s happening to me.” He holds her shoulder as she slumps down. She rips off her jersey, sits by a lamp… He caresses her waist… “Help me,” she says, “Please… I’m afraid I just won’t make it… Streets, factories, colors, people, everything!” Kissing her, elicits her pushing away. Much more in this vein. Her twisting cannot reach the right register. Her tight hand.  The right register needing perseverance. Bars on the window. Her tense hand and fingers… She puts on her clothes. Downstairs, she races along the street, with Corrado in pursuit. She comes back to his car. Her hair a blue blur. A white-washed wall; her shadow is pronounced. (There for the asking.) They revisit her empty shop. A tiny light, almost invisible. He asks her, “What are planning to do?” / “Nothing. It’s no use worrying about me… I can’t take anymore. I’ve done everything to readjust to reality.” (Humbug!) “I even managed to be unfaithful to my husband…” / His advice? “You mustn’t think about these things.” / “There’ s something terrible about reality, and I don’t know what it is. No one will tell me.” (That last phrase indicates her hard core, spoiled patrician softness. Softness (caring), being a deadly mistake, unless difficult preparations have been developed. She snivels, “Even you don’t help me, Corrido…”

    “You brood on your illness.” From here on in, its all tonality; world of winsomeness, world of love. The first of the segments had appeared much earlier than in our version. Ugo, and a few friends he thinks to be lively, congregate at a shack on the dock, to prove that they have the right stuff. They prove nothing. Giuliana and Corrado also play along with the private brothel, where more privacy could be had. The action is, as you would expect, drab. (One example is all we need: “I can’t go to bed with a man who earns less than me.” Antonioni would have found this a powerful condemnation.) In the scrum, Giuliana, thinking that quail eggs to be aphrodisiac, she blurts out, “I want to make love!” Loud laughter.

    Such nonsense; and the beaten-up interior being a treasure of modern art. The interior has a large, white space, and a smaller red space. The rather cheap wood dining area, with its huge pile of uncleaned plates, embraces—were it not been stunned from many generations of lostness—might have noticed a unique texture. The lostness of its presence being driven by pride to avoidance of careful understanding. The white room: a Milky Way of distressed presences.  Along a window, each range touching a question of longitude and latitude. Other areas in the kitchen present myriad voyages to reach the heavens. Slight irregularities of paint and light and syntheses are there to be transported. With every alert (awaiting a real human being), the hubbub flits upon the hope of hearing not only the stars but one’s true flight about lifting the elements. The red room: also lost to its coloration, but with impulsive awareness of sexuality. On that note we can discern scraps of sensibility, pathetic garbage notwithstanding, but a direction for someone adult to turn it around. You might think Corrado, the orator of conscience, to display some poise. But tide up amidst of a mob of insectile creeps, the tonality loses its force for true joy. He tells his new friends, “You have no idea what men in other countries do. For example, in Jorden, I saw men eat mutton fat and honey for breakfast.” In the midst of being a good mixer on a large and crowded mattress, he stretches out, accidently kicking a board, sending a scarlet wooden fixture of the vivid art into the area of the precent of the whites. Fallowing in quick order, the place becomes freezing; they begin to tear out walls and use that art for fire; a large ship docks right outside the beautiful gallery; a smallpox outbreak begins; in the excitement, Giuliana drives away, and almost goes over the wrong end of the dock. The sins of melodrama. (In a similar embarrassment, after dismissing Corrado, she returns to those docks. She attempts to sail away on a ship. No one knows Italian. The sole night crew thinks she’s a hooker. After that, she tangles with Valerio. Again, no translation, as in the film, L’Eclisse. A cutesy moment has the two attending to poisonous pollution in the air. Time to get out.)

    Though she’ll never succeed in retail, our protagonist has carried to us another moment of breathtaking heart, like the walls at the docks. The heart of the street she’s absent-minded about. The unadorned façades of one-level shops. Its cement presence, however, manages a curl as it takes your heart away. Uniform but distinctive. Flat, but corrosive in many ways. Gray, but dark with thousands of tones. Millions of surprises. Where are the customers?