invaderJim

The film opens with a surrealist sequence, four full years before the surrealist film movement would gain worldwide recognition with Un Chien Andalou (1929). But many of the techniques which would later be utilized by Bunuel and Dali are here viewed in force, including montage, fluid camera movement, Dutch angles, imposition, camera distortion, and a nonlinear narrative which relies on disjointed flashbacks. However, this pure abstract cinema will eventually give way to a documentary style that may cause viewers to wonder whether they are witnessing nothing more than a faithful representation of life inside a mental institution in the early twentieth century. This collision of the surreal and hyperreal is what gives the film its fatal edge. The narrative itself, told within this vacillation between two mutually exclusive styles, is much less accessible than in the typical film. It unfolds without the benefit of title cards, either to explain events or dialogue. But this vagueness is precisely what allows the perspective and emotion of the viewer to impose itself on the work. Our response is totally our own, and this makes the horror we experience all the more profound.

This movie is a masterpiece, certainly, but as admirable as it is for its technical mastery and genre inversion, it somehow fails to entertain. This should not discourage anyone from watching it, they should simply know what they are getting into from the outset. More than anything, this is an experiment of film: testing new possibilities for the medium (a trend that Antonioni would follow in the next two installments in this trilogy, La Notte and L'Eclisse) and new methods of emotional manipulation. The first thing to notice is the camera- work and direction style. It is a truly beautiful film, jumping from extreme close-ups characterized by frenetic movement to wide overhead shots of an island or city in which one or two distant figures can be viewed etching out their paths like ants in the sand. It often distracts from the underlying story, especially in the later parts of the movie when the story itself has almost seemed to vanish along with the missing girl who acts as the focal point of the film, if it can be said to have one. The story itself offers some severe challenges to the audience. The first thirty minutes are devoted to establishing the mystery involved in the disappearance of Anna, the best friend of one of the film's protagonists and lover of the second. In a departure from the traditions of the genre, however, this mystery does not lead to a criminal conspiracy or hard-boiled investigation, but is instead followed by a series of the most mundane events imaginable. This is not to say that the lives of the two protagonists do not turn upside down, merely that this upheaval is internal rather than dependent upon external circumstances. As their half-hearted attempts to locate Anna lead them nowhere, Claudia and Sandro find themselves committing a more profound betrayal than if they had abandoned Anna to die outright: moving on with their lives. Rather than serving as the primary driver of the film, the mystery is covered up like an untreated wound festering just beneath the surface and infecting everything around it. Eventually the two characters reach a point in which the reappearance of Anna would no longer be the solution to a problem, but would in fact be the culmination of one. The final scene is striking in its ambiguity. Are we witnessing redemption, or the final stages of the fall from grace? Even the music seems to be unable to decide.