Of Time and "The Passenger": Travel notes after a screening.

Saw Antonioni’s “The Passenger”, starring the young Jack Nicholson. I was transfixed by by the long silent stunning shots of the North African Desert and 1970s Barcelona and by the evocation of an era in which serious themes (identity, political revolution, love) could be addressed in an unhurried, open-ended, cumulatively powerful manner by filmmakers who didn’t feel the need to perpetually entertain us or tell us what to feel. I was acutely aware, in watching it, how much the world had changed since it came out. There was, for example, an extended shot of the existentially dislocated Jack Nicholson and the lovely Maria Schneider together in a hotel room and, as I watched it, I couldn’t help thinking that, viewed through the prism of modern consciousness, the film’s deep existential spell would be broken by the outline of Maria Schneider’s inexcusably visible panty line. Call me old fashioned, but I was moved by this memory of a time in the world when there were things that seemed more important than the proper concealment of an undergarment.

As I mentioned, I was deeply moved by the film. But, in truth, I’m not sure how much of it was for reasons intrinsic to the film (although I do think it was quite good, particularly the extraordinary final tracking shot) and how much of it was due to fact that I was watching the film after a thirty year interval—an extra-filmic condition that triggered all kinds of early adolescent memories and made me acutely aware of the passage of my own life.

This reminds me of my feelings about the Richard Linklater sequel, “Before Sunset.” So much of the power of that film derived from the irreduceable, extra-filmic fact that not only had the actors actually aged 10 years since the antecedent film, but the audience had as well.. Hence the actual passage of that 10 years of lived life was inscribed in the viewing experience, giving it a uniquely real power and gravitas--sort of like the 28/7-Up films by Michael Apted. I think this extrinsic reality (and the associated specular narcissism of the viewer), helped account for the huge critical response to the film. Time itself was the co-star along with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delphy.

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Posted on 11/28/2005 ( Permanent Link )
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