" Blow Up " is another great creation by Italian director Antonioni (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1912-2007) after completing "L'avventura" ( L'avventura ), "Red Desert" ( The Red Desert ) and other works. The film is uncomplicated, telling the story of a photographer who stumbles upon a murder after he takes intimate photos of men and women in the park. The film is not a traditional narrative film. We can see that its narrative components are not the main elements of the film. Some elements with symbolic representations should be the object of attention, such as a group of carnival hippies at the beginning and end of the film, and the protagonist Thomas. ( Thomas ) deeds, symbols of sound, etc. Various symbolic signs indicate that the film is not a purely narrative film. The director brings all the elements together to construct a unique field with symbolic meaning, and proposes a more philosophical issue to the audience: what is truth? What exactly is magnified, is it the so-called truth?
One could say that Antonioni framed the film as an expression of his "agnostic" world. [1] We have no way of knowing why the characters in the film behave so bizarrely, the facts of the homicide, the purpose and intent of Thomas—as Antonioni once said in his documentary, “The main character at the end of the film into a state of crisis", we have the same doubts about the film itself: whether the audience is participating and whether the film itself is real. This state of crisis can be said to be a true portrayal of spiritual nihilism in the West in the 1960s: capitalism prevailed after World War II, the cold division brought about by industrial development, the prevalence of various revolutions and movements, and the great prosperity of culture and art , sex, the numbness of drugs... These issues of modernity are what the film focuses on and what Antonioni has always shown in his films. In addition, he also reconstructed the spatial composition in the film. In most of his works, the protagonists are placed in a "decentralized" spatial structure, giving people a free and unstable state. [2] Taking this film as an example, there is a lot of obvious and deliberate spatial composition in the film. For example, in the scene of Thomas shooting fashion photography for a model, (although it is a need for fashion photography) people and the shooting scene interact with each other. Cut to form individual sections. The spatial layout of the studio also has the same effect. The rooms are placed in different spatial positions according to the difference in function, and equipment, beams, curtains, and photos are used in many places within the shooting plane to separate the space and the characters. The director of the scene where the protagonist goes to the park for filming chooses to place the protagonist in an open outdoor space, and uses a large number of distant scenes, resulting in the double effect of the audience peeping at the protagonist and the protagonist peeping at the subject. Furthermore, according to the director's own account, he changed the colors of London's streets, creating a psychedelic space that gave the audience the contradictory illusion of being outside the industrial city. This attention to space further reflects the alienation of Westerners in the industrial city, the alienation between people, and the unknowability of the future, and it also confirms the director's statement that "the protagonist enters a state of crisis".
Sound constitutes the symbol of the film. It can be found that there are three types of sounds that attract attention in the film, namely, the voice of hippies, the wind that accompanies the murder case, and the pop music that occasionally appears in the picture (popular in the 1960s, rock, jazz, etc.). The first is the voice of the first type of hippies, which appears at the beginning and end of the film at the same time, heralding the beginning and end of the film, and explaining an important time background, that is, the rebellious sixties. Accompanied by the loud noise, the appearance of the hippies at the beginning is directly connected with the protagonist and asks Thomas for money, which also produces contradictions and conflicts; and at the end, the appearance of the hippies is still accompanied by cheerful shouts, A quiet game of tennis followed, with an invitation to Thomas. At this time, the audience can only hear the sound of tennis balls and tennis rackets, but can't see the specific object. This strange sensory mobilization makes the audience fall into the blurred boundary between reality and illusion: the scope of vision is nothingness. And the range of hearing is real. The same effect also appears in the processing of the wind. For the first time, the sound of wind appeared in the park where Thomas was photographed secretly. In other words, the sound of wind represented a specific place and scene. After that, the sound of wind also appeared in the process of Thomas developing and enlarging the photo, reminding the audience to restore the situation at that time. , trying to involve the audience in this discussion of the truth. The more special sound is the pop music that occasionally circles inside and outside the picture, which is constantly switched in the film, from jazz pop to jazz guitar, and then to jazz piano, and appears repeatedly in the film, sometimes as a film. Some of the characters played in the series belong to voiceovers, including a live house (a small music performance scene) that Thomas came to before the end. Pop music is a symbol of culture. It not only presents the unique culture and art of that era, but also creates the atmosphere of the era when culture prevails, which is also reflected in the protagonist's hairstyle - The Beatles) style classic hairstyle. In addition, it is worth noting that there is another mechanical shutter sound captured by an alternative camera. It happened when Thomas returned to the park for the third time to check the body. He wanted to find the truth again. At this time, the body had disappeared, and there were only ups and downs around him. The wind and the occasional shutter sound. At this time, Thomas was transformed from a peeping person to a peeped person. There is no clue as to who made the shutter sound, but it also magically shows the chaos of reality and illusion, representing the doubts of the audience and the characters in the film, and it is difficult to distinguish What is fantasy, what is real.
Different from Wes Anderson's (1969-) precise grasp of color, Antonioni sees color as an element for constructing narrative space in "Zoom", and hides this interpretation code. The story takes place in the festive London, but Thomas, who lives in the city, has always packaged himself in three colors of black, white and gray. Even if his work is fashion photography, and the bright colors are indispensable, it can be seen from his dress and the design of his studio. This shows his obsession with black and white and gray; in addition, Thomas's photographs are all black and white. The collision of color and black and white seems to be a possibility for Thomas to fight against the world. He tries to find the truth and explain the truth, but he has no chance of winning under the enveloping color world. Like a magnified photo, reality is no longer reality, it becomes a mass of black and white particles that do not constitute anything, leaving not truth but absurdity. From the treatment of color, we can see Antonioni's negative attitude towards modern society.
Back to the original question, what exactly is "Zooming in"? The author believes that what is magnified is not the so-called truth itself, but the nothingness that appears in the real world. What the film builds is a microcosm of the spiritual crisis of modern and contemporary Western society, and Thomas has also become a symbol to guide the audience's thinking, presenting the plight of the times in which postmodern people live. And the fragmented elements and symbols shown in the film: murders, rock bands, rave parties, antique shops, hippies, models, music fans, tennis without physical objects... are actually a hodgepodge of modern social phenomena. Thomas’ special identity as a photographer also represents an intervention in the identity of the audience—photography itself is an act of aggression. Thomas fell into a state of nothingness after trying to grasp the truth but could not get the result. At the invitation of the hippies, he finally escaped into a world where he could not distinguish between reality and illusion, and fell into the predicament of cognition, which also represented the audience's perception of the truth. confused. In addition to the above mentioned, I think there are many more things that the film wants to explore. Antonioni has created such an art space, any absurd, cold, radical, extreme modernity issues are included, which is the great charm of his films.
[1] Dai Jinhua. "Zooming in": The Art of Reflexive [J]. Contemporary Cinema, 1992(01):97-102.
[2] Wang Dongdong, Luo Junyue. Spatial Philosophy Analysis of Antonioni's Films Based on the Perspective of Architectural Phenomenology [J]. Contemporary Films, 2015(04):50-56.
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