(More) Notes on Antonioni

Posted because the new film I'm shooting is called 'Eclipses.'

Antonioni has always been the grand master of negative space in cinema. Instead of sculpting his scenes to present a cogent whole (a self-enclosed narrative), he fills his films with painstaking detail only to direct attention to the things we can't see. Indeed, even the mysterious title of his 1962 film, L'Eclisse, attests to that – we never see an eclipse in the film, nor is one ever alluded to. The title's significance lies perhaps in the original Greek etymology of the word – an 'eclipse' means to be absent, to cease to exist. This title literally comes to the fore in the last scene, when the characters literally vanish from the narrative, leaving the unhinged camera to roam the places they used to frequent when they were together as a couple.

Yet, the last scene's power ironically lies in the 'presence' of the characters. The absence of the two lovers, played by Monica Vitti and Alain Delon, is powerful to us only because of their hitherto ubiquitous presence. Antonioni's camera is hinged so tightly to their experience – the operative shot in the film is the insert shot, in which we see what the characters see, see what the characters touch, are allowed to occupy the same space as the characters – that its unhinging at the end becomes disorienting. That is, the empty frames only become significant because the camera, the locations, the places, even the incidental passers-by, are imbued with the presence of Vitti and Delon (just as the gaze of the missing woman imbues every frame of L'Avventura).

For this reason, as many have pointed out, Antonioni consistently directs our attention to the 'out of field,' the space that exists outside of the frame, the emptiness between frames/scenes. Antonioni's favorite narrative technique is the ellipsis – the omission of narrative information to point out a lack (an eclipse), a gap of knowledge. In L'Eclisse, a drunk is seen speeding down the road into the night; in the next scene, we see the crashed car being fished out of the river. In Blowup, this is taken to the extreme when he introduces creative geography to question the normalcy of the diegesis – in a fantastic scene, Redgrave runs out of frame after her initial meeting with Hemmings, only to run into frame again, many scenes later, at Hemmings' studio, as if no time has elapsed in between. The characters often slip between the gaps in Antonioni's films – a change of light, a shift in the camera's direction and they become absent, they cease to exist.

This leads one to wonder – where do the characters go when they become absent? What space do they occupy? The answer might lie in Antonioni's fascination with monuments. L'Eclisse, especially, is set in Rome, where old and new monuments within the same space. In one overhead shot from a plane, we see the ancient Colosseum sitting uncomfortably with modern buildings. Even the stock exchange scenes take place within a classical building replete with columns and dome.

In fact, going back to the principle of constructing a negative space, couldn't we even say that Antonioni constructs scenes like monuments? His characters inhabit these anachronistic time capsules (even the 1960s fashion and decor look dated today) that not only define the time they occupy (positive space), but also the time that has passed and the time that would come (negative space). Antonioni's characters are in the ever-renewing present; they touch and gaze at things (monuments themselves) to continually affirm their presence in the world, in relation to the world, and in relation to time. Indeed, monuments were first constructed by man to affirm his presence. The first megaliths were erected in Europe to indicate human presence, by way of transforming its landscape; by constructing what is in front of them (positive space), ancient man could transform what was around them (negative space). They could declare they are present (not absent), immediately protecting them from what has past (an empty landscape) and what is to come (the monuments' immortality).

Similarly, Antonioni's characters are caught between the two-way flow of time – one present recedes infinitely into the past, the other present extends infinitely into the future. This is the specific angst that his characters have to deal with (what separates them from those of Ozu, another master who shares a similar sensibility of time/impermanence) – the reticence of coming out of a past that no longer suits them and the anxiety of lasting into a future that would not include them. They only have the present, but they are constantly haunted by the image of time. The stock exchange is the central metaphor in L'Eclisse because it is undeniably set in the present although haunted by the specter of collapse. It is the ringing image of impermanence, the instability of everyday life, the promise of change. After all, isn't change the only factor that terrifies all of Antonioni's characters?