Avoiding the Poison: The Immaculately Quiet Beauty of Red Desert

Emma Zbiral-Teller gets down with Antonioni's classic, Red Desert, for Facets Features.


When it comes to first impressions of a film, I am completely biased in a sense. If the first 10 minutes capture my full attention, which is incredibly admirable, I’m usually set for the rest of the film. If they find a way to immediately pull me in, no matter what the remaining content, I will at least respect it for its attempt.

I recently attended a Facets Film School class called Light Narrative: The Rhetoric of Exposure where we watched and discussed Michaelangelo Antonioni’s Red Desert (1964). It enraptured me. Not only did it pull me in within the first minute, it kept my eyes glued to the screen and my brain suctioned to the plot and all recurring themes. I’ve never been able to pay full attention to something that isn’t at least slightly beautiful, and this was stunning. I was obsessed with Red Desert the moment it started and all I could think about was how awesome the rest of it was going to be.

The opening credits appear over an out of focus background of treetops, and pans to factory smokestacks billowing out fuzzy smoke. It spends the entirety of the next three minutes with these same factory shots, completely out of focus yet easy to decipher as monstrous human inventions. By softening them, they were made much more innocent and dreamlike, signifying the theme of the film, that being a disconnection with reality.

With these shots, Antonioni jumps right in, asking the audience the think, to say to themselves, “Focus…focus…focus… why isn’t it focusing?!” In just the first three minutes, he starts an argument with his viewers, asking them to participate with what they are seeing. I was drawn in because I knew it was about to get real; this was serious, Antonioni wasn’t fooling around. This wasn’t going to be an entertainment flick; I was about to witness a heavily meaningful art film. I knew I was about to spend the next two hours intently thinking as well as watching.

I’m drawn to the obscure and the unique--to the different--and Red Desert’s beginning was unlike any I had seen. Thus, I couldn’t look away. It didn’t matter that it was my tenth hour at Facets; that I hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before; that I was previously bemoaning these facts, wondering how I was going to keep myself awake for this class. Suddenly all that mattered was how the rest of this film was going to look.

Now, this may not be everyone’s reaction to the film. The pace is excruciating at times, but if you’re willing to interpret the meaning behind this excruciation and if you’re able to see its stunning visual glory, then it is completely and totally worth it. I am also easily obsessed with discreetly beautiful things, so it was easy for Red Desert to serve as a Mecca of passion for me.

As the opening credits end, the factory comes into sharp focus and balls of bright orange fire are seen spurting out of the top of a smokestack. The camera pans down to a crowd of people--seemingly workers in the midst of a strike. It is raining. It is grey. It is gloomy. There are factories all around, everything is metal and concrete; everything is focused on the grey pallet. Every surrounding is a human invention.

A woman, named Guiliana (played by Monica Vitti), is seen walking towards the camera in a green coat with her young son who is clad in a yellow coat. It is apparent that she is the protagonist. It was easy to automatically notice the intensity in her eyes and the lines on her forehead. You can’t introduce a character with a furrowed brow without spending time to discover why the brow is furrowed, so, the moment I saw her, I immediately thought, “We’ll be seeing A LOT of this woman.”

Although their coats are the only dash of color thus far, making them important characters, Guiliana and son do not contrast with their surroundings. They are apparent as deep colors, yet remain in the same range of color with everything else. Though full of brilliance, there is a slight sadness in their coats, simply because of the relation to their surroundings or the way they tiptoe through the mud. Guiliana’s desperation is easily noted when you see her bribe a man for his half eaten sandwich and then rush away to devour it amidst a thicket of bare, dark and twisting branches.

There is no explanation to her actions--she doesn’t seem to be penniless and afterwards she contently walks away with her son--but even before seeing her face, you know something is not right. She is different; trapped. Although her coat stands out, it is natural in its surroundings. It is supposed to be there. It will not change settings. This is all there is.

Many shots throughout start with the same blurriness the film opened with, yet only for mere seconds because someone immediately walks into the scene, in perfect focus. Antonioni grapples with the theme of physical space in that he puts an overwhelming amount of sky and atmosphere in this film. He gives it this space. He makes you look up into all of it, yet there is nothing to look up into because it is always overcast.

The viewer is forced to look up and up and up, and there is nothing. Antonioni begins with a space and has characters enter into them, attributing the control of the scene to the surroundings and the environment, not the characters themselves. This can go on to assume that he was trying to convey our sense of non-control over the land. No matter how much we try to tame it; to build on it; to throw slabs of concrete over it, we will always remain prisoners to the land. We will always be trapped, and the only character in the film that knows this is Guiliana.

Throughout the entirety of the film, she grapples with the throws of insanity. With intensely bizarre mannerisms, she is consistently on the brink of reality. She even talks about how she tried committing suicide because she felt like she was on a consistent decline, slowly sinking into her environment and soon to be engulfed. Though still alive, Guiliana is still constantly disturbed by her surroundings and can never leave. Several times, she is wedged in a corner, up against a wall, stuck on a pole, and so on; pigeon holed into the dark, little corners of her life.

Patience is essential with this film. As the viewer, you keep waiting for things to happen that you know are going to happen, but sometimes never do. There is an orgy scene in which no orgy takes place. The subject is alluded to; talked about and minimally shown, yet it never really occurs.

Instead, the characters tear down the interior wooden slats that make up the bedroom wall of a tiny shack that teeters on the edge of a mysterious and foggy dock where the “orgy” takes place. They throw the slats into the fireplace, feeding it for warmth, but leave them sticking out of the fire. It’s a strange scene, because while they are doing this, they are hysterically laughing and jumping up and down with joy. You, the viewer, are either waiting for an actual orgy or for the entire place to go up in flames and sink into the sea. The scene is ridden with anxiety--something Guiliana is constantly struggling with regardless of what is happening. They are tearing at the slats of the house just as time and space are tearing at Guiliana’s soul.

The shack is an odd setting, extremely theatrical in its outlook and obviously metaphorical of the bleak and bizarre human condition. You don’t know why these people live in a run-down shack on the edge of a foggy dock, or why they think it would make for a great party location, but it doesn’t matter because the poetics are outstanding.

Every single aspect is a perfect metaphor of Guiliana’s feelings of isolation, desperation, anxiety and depression. It is dark, grey and mysterious. They are in the middle of nowhere. No one (including the characters) has any idea what is going to happen next, and they revel in it. Just like Guiliana, you keep thinking that if they rattle the shack enough, it will suddenly slip into the unforgiving sea.

Guiliana’s husband is a plant manager, attributing to their location of residence, so the majority of the film is placed within factories and between smokestacks. Many reviewers link this to a statement about the deterioration of the environment, but I think it is much more representational.

I found these monstrosities stunning in that they represent both banality and beauty. They show the unintentional aesthetic behind human innovation and how it will pollute our souls if we stand close enough to breathe it in. Yet, from a distance or behind a window where safety is contained and survival imminent, these smokestacks are quiet, looming giants; classic and simple in their demeanor.

The last line of the film sums up this theme perfectly. Guiliana and her son are walking through a factory field.Nearby, a smokestack billows yellow smoke. The boy asks his mother why the smoke is yellow. Guiliana tells him that it is poison. The boy inquires about the safety of the birds that fly through it. Guiliana responds that the birds have learned not to do that. Antonioni leaves the viewer with this statement, asking them to meditate on what it means. I saw it as an explanation of Guiliana’s sanity and how maybe there is hope because she’s learning not to fly through the yellow smoke. With her son at her side, she is discovering how to avoid the poison.

This was Antonioni’s first color film and it was exploding with an immaculate color palate, perfectly attuned to a central range. Cinematographer Carlo Di Palma crafted the feel of Red Desert with genius, keeping its tonal range smack in the middle of perfection. This point would be proven if one removed the color making it a black and white film—the result would be incredible gray: the sign of a great cinematographer.

True blacks and true whites would be sparse. You would think intense contrast in a color film would be essential, but it’s the opposite. Perfection on the color scale of a film comes when every one of its colors is in the same range. Contrast can be exciting, but if you want a film that is consistent in its tonality, a central range must be achieved. An honest theme can only be reached if filmmakers are aware of every detail; if they craft it so that the visuals create a constant feel. No matter what its texture, the look and feel of the film must mirror its voice. Otherwise it will attain no deeper meaning.

Cinematography has always been alluring to me, since I am extremely interested in and obsessed with the visual aesthetic of things, especially film and art. Thus, Light Narrative: The Rhetoric of Exposure (taught by cinematographer, professor and genius, Michael Wright) completely blew me away. It was laden with understanding the perceptions of the cinematographic mindset and thought process. Red Desert was a perfect foray into this mindset. It is one of the only films I’ve seen displayed exactly what I find essential in a film. That being the creation of deep meaning through odd beauty.

Thanks Michaelangelo, I appreciate it.