Red Desert

A majestic plunge into a primate state of human existence. The sound effects, the cinematography, Monica Vitti - everything comes together beautifully, and is resolved in a distressing fashion. And yes, Monica Vitti is the most beautiful woman to be captured on film.

If only all movies were this beautiful. Meticulous compositions of gray, dead and lifeless urban landscapes come to life through Antonioni's eye for symmetry and asymmetry, balance and the disturbance of said balance. "The Red Desert" is a powerful character study that delves into the uncertain and ambiguous nature of the mind, and is not - as some have noted - at all boring. On the contrary, it daringly refuses to structure its scenes in a simple, causal fashion. Raw (un)natural beauty.

I love Vitti's character, she's sympathetic, vulnerable and human and and the film has some sparkling visuals. Unfortunately it's also incredibly slow and aimless and the rest of the characters are unlikable and/or forgettable. Antonioni has some interesting things to say but he makes the film so detached that it's hard to care about what's being said.

L'avventura (1960) what a wonderful depressive movie. Şaka bi yana iki film de gereksiz birbirine benziyor. Antonioni bile olsan kendini tekrardan kaçamıyorsun. Ayrıca filmde anlatılan bazı sekanslar çok daldan dala olmuş. Çocuğun üç kağıt yapması (böylesi bir filmin spoiler vs. olmaz.) ve bunu 20 dk izlememiz çok saçma.

On second watch - this is much more frightening than I remember. Descending into one's alienation is melancholic and extremely relevant these days. Behind closed doors we are primate by nature, unable to board the ship that may lead us away from a decaying cycle of humanity.

Another Marxist work on friction between industry and nature resulting in existential angst, alienation, detachment and entrapment within and of Vitti and, eventually, as an inheritance, her son, whose being surrounded by technology seemed to have set him on his way. At times constructed using mildly contrived components (eg her having an attack after trampling a paper in a grey street; or burning the red shack), but the bird analogy did add a nice Stroszekean flavour. La_Notte/rating/dardan

I can't seem to make up my mind about Antonioni. Like his other films, this is mysterious and visually intriguing, but I don't find it very involving on an intellectual nor on an emotion level. And just like his other movies it still leaves a certain impression of having seen something clever. Well, it's a somewhat cold depiction of an alienated and angst-ridden girl, that usually does the trick I guess.

The desert of Gestell may be Angst-red and the smoke poison-yellow, but Antonioni seems to want to insist that the scale and colours of industry are beautiful and his protagonist's problems symptoms of the need to "adjust", signified by her resort to fables of blue nature and her failed attempt at adultery (one more "old solution"). Evidence of the film's complexity or the filmmaker's confusion? Imagery is constantly impressive (if flattened like the affect); electronic sound design less so.

A meditation on the fragmented mind of a person in the modern, industrial world. The mechanical in this film is at least as near to the protagonist as the other people--no one knows how to love, and she feels this deeply.

the acting were great. like the movie blow-up there is a strange dialog between the landscape and actors. What i like in Michelangelo's movie is the tension, an uneasing ambiance, a void filled with nervouness. The woman tries to escape something we cannot graps, nor understand. her body move unrelentless, turn always from people.

I hate everything that happens in this movie yet I always find myself completely mesmerized from start to finish. The cinematography is absolutely stunning, and Monica Vitti is wonderful in this. Red Desert is among my favorite few films.

Antonioni's rage against the machines and the men who build them--possibly his most melodramatic (and didactic) film, made the year after Rachel Carson published The Silent Spring.

Strange and unsettling. The cinematography is extraordinary and the locations even more so; a land of steam and fog, lakes of pollution and poison. The setting reminded me of Tarkovsky's Stalker, while the odd modernist interiors and the ambient background noises reminded me of 2001. Vitti is incredible. A lost soul in an alien world. I just wanted to give her a hug.

Every shot has been meticulously planned and thought out, and with wonderful effect. This really is an amazingly beautiful movie. As expected from Antonioni it moves slowly, and the pacing can be politely described as methodical. The highlight of the movie is without doubt Monica Vitti's amazingly fragile performance and her chemistry with Richard Harris. Recommended.

Fuck off.

The aesthetics are beautiful and I do feel like there's something more here, but it's not that great.

Monica Vitti with red-brown hair; mmmmmmmmm! Lucky newspaper.

As Shakespeare once said, "Beauty without substance is like a rose that smells like shit". Very applicable to this little opus. It is undenyably a real looker, however the story is more of the same "bored, slightly disturbed, rich, white people being bored, rich, white and slighly disturbed"-stuff that left me more enthralled with the scenic backgrounds than the actual plot in L'avventura.

Another beautiful, meditative, and challenging film from Antonioni. What I really like about his stuff is how his sensibilities are so completely unwavering, that as long as I wait until I am in the right mood to appreciate it, the results are always positive.

Vitti's performance is riveting. The whole thing is incredibly thoughtful and nuanced, giving you much to absorb and appreciate. The cinematography is the best I've seen in an Antonioni film, with bold color and heaps of haunting images. And the sound design is an unsettling mix of industrial hum and electronic noise. I also found this to be the most emotionally involved of his movies. Beautiful and strange and definitely worth coming back to.

There's no sense in denying that Antonioni's movies are usually borderline boring. This is a necessary side-effect of a deliberate and normally successful method, of his kind of Zen attitude to narrative, and the slow pace usually pays off and ends up adding to the excitement. The Red Desert is less successful in this sense. It's smart and visually powerful but it's somewhat less compelling than most of his movies. Don't make this your introduction to Antonioni, but fans shouldn't miss this.

I can just about recommend checking this one out for Antonioni's eye candy but if you want stronger pergormances and better dialogue, this has nothing on Bergman's 'Through a Glass Darkly'.

I was disliking this intensely for a lot of its run time but a funny thing happened as the film moved along and I found myself more and more compelled. The sound design is amazing. I don't really think I got it--it might be a film to revisit with some context down the line--but as an experience it was interesting how I went from hating it to having difficulty taking my eyes off it by the end.

This is not my usual type of a movie, but I could appreciate the amazing use of colors (and often, the lack of them). There was something very creepy and offputting about a lot of these scenes that contrasted with the incredible beauty of the ever nervous and uncomfortable character played by Monica Vitti. It didn't engage me as much as I expected and the plot was a bit too slow for me. It's still a very beautiful thing to watch, maybe more like a painting than a movie.

*Shrug emoji

Monica Vitti is a terrible actress.

A difficult film that asks questions but has no answers.

A moving meditation on isolation and anxiety. (I also can't help think this could be a commentary on the environmental issue of "progress" with so many industrial waste shots.) It's a little slow at times, but Vitti does a good job with showing her internal battle to regain reality. Interestingly, while color plays such an important role in the film, the best moment may have been the black and white fog enveloping the pier.

I kind of forced myself to watch this while very tired, so perhaps I'll feel differently after another viewing at some later point, for better or worse. But it seems that the text is annoyingly blunt, expounding too literally what is already communicated through each character's relationship with their environment. The apocalyptic landscapes are stunning, and Monica Vitti's photogenic presence helps transcend her on-the-nose woe-is-me dialogue.

Antonioni's Red Desert is painted with grey industrial landscapes, empty streets, and deafening drones. This gloominess and distance is primarily an extension of Giuliana, an isolated woman suffering from PTSD, but is possibly also analogous to the 50 year-old director's alienated perspective on French society at the time. Though Red Desert's very tight thematically, Giuliana's suffering is groanfully bourgeoise and unsympathetic. Just as the character feels, there's nothing to grab onto.

Wish i got this; flew right by my head

A visual masterpiece. Antonioni's framing is second to none and his use of colour is bold and expressionistic. Combined with an evocative use of sound, the late maestro poetically transforms the bleakness of a desolate industrial landscape into a trance like thing of abject beauty. Two minor flaws: 1)an (at times) overly self conscious deployment of symbolism; and 2)Vitti's melodramatic outbursts convey an inherited expressiveness that is at odds with the director's visionary brilliance.

a woman experiences anxieties amongst a cold industrial landscape. the source, nature and meaning of these anxieties is rather indecipherable, which makes this a rather foggy film that is also fairly hypnotic. all of this is to be expected of an antonioni film. some parts feel quite rohmeresque, which has its positives and negatives. better than l'avventura but not as good as l'eclisse.

Antonioni's vision of the modern world as a beautiful apocalyptic wasteland. I've read that he wanted to make this film because he simultaneously admired and feared the advancements of the modern world. It is unbelievable how well that duality is realized. It's a beautiful film.

Absolutely gorgeous, but aside from Vitti's convincing fragility, there's not much depth for you to be absorbed by.

watched: 2013, 2023

I fail to appreciate this movie beyond the visual voyage that antonioni took me on of the mesmerizing industrial landscape. vittis breakdown failed to evoke anything in me except for annoyance of the stereotypical hysterical woman. Id like to use the word poetic to describe the movie, and I sure can understand why one would, but I cant see beyond its flaws.

attention on homo faber

Fascinating in its way, but falls prey ultimately to art film modishness.

#284

"Thematically, Red Desert is a distillation of Antonioni's preferred themes and imagery: alienation, anxiety, modern life, and industrialized landscapes." - Jaime N. Christley

(Blu-ray rewatch)

310

Safe meets A Woman Under the Influence. The protagonist, increasingly aware of a lack of empathy and connection in her environment, suffers from chaotic spells of disassociation and hopelessness. She must suffer so others can learn to adapt, like the first birds who have flown into the yellow smoke. One of the more visceral films from Antonioni - his depiction of perspective via mise-en-scene and picture/sound editing induce an almost trance-like nightmare state of ebbing and flowing anxiety.

Beatiful But Not Much More

358

Honestly, I think this is beautiful and boring, very boring.

# 421

Now this is really something. It makes no sense whatsoever, but you always want to keep watching it