Look, but don’t touch

How does a modernist-existentialist Italian film, replete with long, uncomfortable silences, odd hyper-long shots, an industrial aesthetic and a complete lack of narrative arc sound as a way to kill two hours over spring break?

Well, what if it’s filled with some of the most breathtaking cinematography since the dawn of color film, rivaling even Kubrick in its composition, interplay of line and color, hue and tone? What if it was playing at the Northwest Film Center, and you know that that cute visual arts student you’ve been eyeing thinks you’re a bit of a philistine?

Michelangelo Antonioni’s Red Desert (1964) is just the film to get you in good with the art house crowd, and it’s not bad to look at, either. To call the film ambiguous is an understatement. Mercurial and unsatisfying come closer.

Monica Vitti plays Giuliana, the wife of Ugo (Carlo Chionetti), a power plant executive. An automobile accident unbalanced her mentally, and she transitions from composed, silent and painfully vulnerable into paroxysms of absurdity with little provocation. Ugo, at best, is cool toward her damaged psyche and positively indifferent at worst.

Giuliana strikes up a relationship with his coworker Corrado Zeller (Richard Harris) that, like everything potentially sexual or emotional in this film, remains mostly unconsummated. They put on the performance of an affair without all the torrid lovemaking. (Until the end. Kind of.)

There’s an “orgy” scene, in a lurid red-painted room in a shack by the sea, involving dirty jokes, lots of leg and quail’s eggs, but no actual sex. Again, it is the performance of an orgy, all of the trespasses and meaningful glances and guilt, without the release. The sea shack retreat also represents a mere performance of rustic escape. It lies eerily near a major shipping port in what looks like a superfund site.

This strange juxtaposition embodies the major theme of the movie: existential alienation in an industrialized world. But how are we to interpret this alienation? Is it simply the result of our limited aesthetic sensibilities? Can we not see the beauty in the Euclidean simplicity of a factory?

Antonioni even seems to imply that a sort of life emanates from the power plant. Great bursts of steam issue forth from hidden valves and fire from stacks, and there is beauty to the pools of obviously contaminated water that the characters contemplate.

Speaking of beauty, the restored print of the film is gorgeous. For example, Giuliana’s hair is unmistakably red. In earlier versions it could be blond with highlights. Imagine that Rene Magritte painted an industrial landscape. Those clean lines and cool complex pastel tones dominate the screen with occasional splashes of a fire-engine-red pipe, or a kelly-green coat for contrast.

The interiors are equally arresting; the wall surfaces seem inspired by Theran frescoes with their complex matte neutrals and rich pastels. We even see a wall patterned with wild plum trees.

Whatever the critics argue about the film’s depiction of modern industry, there is one telling scene at the end of the film. Giuliana and her son, Valerio, are standing outside of a factory and Valerio has just been playing among some menacingly hissing pipes. He looks to the skyline and asks his mother, “Why is the smoke yellow?”

“Because it is poisonous,” she answers.