Antonioni's works have always expressed the themes that cannot be communicated between people, while "Magnification" is an in-depth portrayal of the unreality of the world.
The film enlarges the world with absurdity. A group of students dressed as clowns rushed through the streets of London. Behind them, photographer Thomas appeared.
Thomas is a professional photographer. It seems that he believes that he can approach the true level of the world through his camera, but it is becoming more and more confusing. One day, he accidentally photographed a couple in the park. After he was found, the woman in the photo was almost frantically trying to get back the film. The seemingly beautiful photos were magnified again and again by Thomas, and there was a murder case. Reality and absurdity began to turn upside down, and the truth of the world could not withstand thinking, ugly and evil, suddenly emerged from it.
He confirmed his guess on the grass in the park, and when he returned, the house had been turned over in a mess.
When he returned to the park the next day, the body was gone. Only the group of hippies at the beginning of the film, they played a non-existent tennis match, like a dance in the air. A ball they imagined fell in front of Thomas, he no longer pursued the real limit, but also invested in it, picking up a ball that did not exist.
Zoom in (1)
There are a lot of chaotic shots in the film, which seem to make the audience doubt their own confusion. These absurd things are true realism of the truth. Only in the haha mirror can people know the nature of the world. Perhaps what is before us is the entire era of fragmentation and confusion. History has reached such a time: rock music, drugs, sex, fashion, ugliness, all kinds of substances gradually numb their eyes, and people are drunk in the life of drunken gold and gold. Many aspects of the 1960s are shown in the film, the confusion, the loss of comfort, and the powerlessness of being a person.
Zoom in (2)
Antonioni is not a philosopher, but he wants to convey a question of the authenticity of the world through Thomas. We are confident that things can withstand scrutiny, when a couple’s date turns into a murder, when the guitar that has just been robbed by the crowd, no one cares, when Thomas goes to pick up a tennis ball that doesn’t exist, do you feel yourself? The collapse of the worldview. Antonioni gave us a kind of complete agnosticism, and when the truth is magnified, we can fall into despair, even pain from the depths of our hearts.
Enlarging (3)
People's own consciousness is not just listening to their own souls. To a large extent, it is the reflection and reflection of the environment, and the threat of the system is everywhere. At the end of the film, Thomas saw a group of young people playing tennis on the way back, but there was no racket and no ball. This was obvious at first. But why can they see but you can't, so you have to compromise and fall into the trap of the group. Thomas' silent ball picking is a small pocket version of what so many people do in reality. Truth is "when false is true, true is also false, and there is nothing in nothing."
A few words from the director:
"Accurately shoot and zoom in on the surface of the things around me. I want to see the truth of them."
"If we go deeper, we may touch the truth of things, and things we can't see with the naked eye will be. Appear. I always don’t believe what I see, because I always imagine what is behind it."
"There was a moment when we grasped the truth, but the truth is fleeting. This is the meaning of the "Zoom" part.
About "Zoom in":
This film is Michelangelo Antonioni's only commercial success. It won the 1966 National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Film and Best Film. Director Jia, like his previous films, "Zoom" further outlines the crisis of contemporary Western spiritual beliefs.
The dubbing of the film is also top-notch, and the blurred music of the jazz keyboard player HERBIEHANCOCK sets off the atmosphere of the movie very well. In addition, the rock band performing inside is also the more famous THEYARDBIRDS, especially the guitar-smashing JEFBECK.
Xu Jie
2005.7.6
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