Julia, played by Morika Witty, has difficulty breathing under the industrial atmosphere. She was restless and unable to control her emotions. She gradually moved away from her husband and children, and began to maintain an ambiguous relationship with her husband's friends. Antonioni just told the audience that the woman's abnormality seemed to have only been frightened in a car accident, but the audience found that her memory was hidden in the film. We only saw an emotion extended by a specific space. The audience can easily find that the walls deliberately painted with paint are a symbol of barrenness and confusion, while the red cabins contain a primitive power of sexual impulse. The white walls in the protagonist’s home give people the illusion of being in a hospital in a trance. And the hysterical Julia is one of the patients, as well as the green symbolizing nature and life. The color information that brings people the most intuitive feeling is indeed commonplace today, but Antonioni’s use of color Boldly let these symbolic information run through the film, the great experiment is self-evident.
When discussing the theme of "Red Desert", the suppression and alienation of the human spirit by modern industrial products is a generally accepted view. The omnipresent noise, exhaust fumes, and polluted rivers in the film convey an unpleasant feeling. But in the interview with Antonioni, he held the opposite view. He does not agree to demonize industry, and he also agrees with the good changes that industry brings to life. Since Antonioni expressed such a stance, why did the alienation of life in the industrial society in "Red Desert" become the most direct visual image? We might as well put down the concept of "industrial society". We just saw a space, and this space is artificial (by deliberately changing the color and state), the characters living in these spaces are also haunted by the nightmare of memory, but apart from the heroine, his husband, Lovers, sons and friends can all live calmly in it. In this way, the alienated color and changed structure in the space are actually the projection of the heroine's own psychology. In Antonioni's view, "space is the role". To a certain extent, the actor is just a moving machine, and the space she is in can truly represent what she wants to express.
If we shift the film from the criticism of industry to the alienation of the heroine's psychological state, we will ask the question "Why is she melancholy" again. An explanation that is entirely due to the shadow of a car accident is too far-fetched. From the previous "emotional trilogy", at this stage Antonioni is obviously more concerned with the construction of space. In these films, external forces can always easily defeat the resistance of the protagonists. While the dialogue is compressed to a minimum, the plot of the movie becomes fragmented, boring and oppressive. This is the inevitability for Antonioni to move from the story to the inner experiment. Under the influence of the "inner realism" trend of thought, the touching stories, real characters, and realistic shooting styles pursued by neorealism in the past have been ruthlessly abandoned, and symbolic scenes have replaced the highly lively photography styles. . From this point of view, "Red Desert" is definitely an extension of the "emotional trilogy", but Antonioni added "color" to "Red Desert" to expand the emotional space.
Since "space is the role" in Antonioni's films, and sometimes space is even more important than the role, then is the space "red desert" the theme of the film? "Red" represents the original impulse, and "desert" is a true portrayal of the protagonist's heart. Does the director want to express the fear of the disappearance of the original natural force? Antonioni himself was noncommittal about this. He didn't give too much concrete explanation for the film title, only that it was a topic he thought of accidentally. But the "red desert" is a state of space after all, and the space of the image is fluid, but time is still. This is the opposite of reality, which is the result of the projection of the inner world. The misalignment between the human inner environment (time) and the real environment (space) may be what Antonioni really wants to express. For Julia, the symbolic spaces in the movie cannot coexist harmoniously with the suppressed memories and alienated emotions. We live in a time and space that is always hurt by industrial forces and Others, by oneself. Julia tried a variety of ways to resist these injuries. She fled and sought the primitive desires of the flesh. She used despair and pain to resist this numb and beautiful world. In the film there is a fantasy scene of Julia, where there are beautiful beaches and rocks, turquoise waters and free swimming people, but such a happy scene will always only exist in memories, and the reality is still grayed by fog. Shrouded in haze.
At the end of the film, Antonioni played a mystery with the audience in the same way as the ending of the "Emotional Trilogy". Has Julia chose to compromise with the environment? Of course, from Antonioni’s perspective, Julia’s compromise with the environment is another victory of space over time. The war against industrialization is only temporary, but the war between the inner world and the external environment has never stopped. Along the way, Antonioni has not given up on the exploration of this issue.
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