No, I’ve never said anything really.
I’ve never threatened anybody. I said “fuck” and “asshole.” So what? I thought that you were all adults.
I have a bad temper. I was being called a child for getting angry (it’s what’s often known as an emotion; you might have heard of it) about the crazy things being said about Michelangelo, but I never threatened anyone physically. I was just rude and used the two (aforementioned) words. So? Why should that be banned? I don’t get it. Can’t I disagree strongly and with strong language? What this sudden shift to censorship? You sound like the crazies in Beijing.
Who’s acting childish?
From The Auteurs’ forum guidelines
“Nobody has the right to abuse anyone verbally, to spam the forum, or make offensive remarks, including but not limited to posts that include racism, sexism, or comments derogatory to another’s sexuality.”
“We will not tolerate when community members go beyond the boundaries of a cat fight—not only is it cruel to the animals, but it’s no longer fun to read and destroys community atmosphere. Keep the fight restricted to cinema, don’t attack people; respect the community and the community will respect you.”
Sorry I Can’t Help But Talk’s posts:
“BEAUTY: Look at the films, asshole.”
“Cram it. Shit it. Eat it, again. And choke on it.”
“Call ZP postmodern again and I’ll pay for you to go to college myself. Jesus, you want postmodernity—you’ll find it there… and you can suck on it.”
“I forget which of you dolts said that each director without the studio system can do this”
““Messianic?” Go fuck yourself. There’s my argument—it’s about as intelligent as yours.”
All of this goes way beyond rational discussion. Nobody has attacked you personally, Sorry I Can’t Help But Talk. Why do you feel that you must insult/harass/belittle anyone who doesn’t share the same opinion as you?
am i the only one who sees the irony of this dude’s name being an apology
Now THAT’s funny.
“Cram it. Shit it. Eat it, again. And choke on it.”
That was too much. I apologize for that.
The rest is just name-calling. Not racism or prejudice.
“but not limited to”
Grow up.
I’m sorry if I was rude, but let’s not pretend that I “attacked” them.
“Call ZP postmodern again and I’ll pay for you to go to college myself. Jesus, you want postmodernity—you’ll find it there… and you can suck on it.”
Now, you’d be a real baby to cry over this one….c’mon….
Anyway, back on topic: I’ve heard that E’clisse is a great introduction to Antonioni. Anyone?
How’s this, I’ll close the account. You guys can go back to talking about which Coen Brothers movie you’d like to sleep with more.
I’m sorry for posting here at all. That was a big mistake.
Man, am I sorry.
Don’t close anything, just calm down. You are not likely to persuade anyone with your views by berating them. I don’t care where you live in this world, “fuck you” will quickly get you next to trouble. It has nothing to do with being American. Just relax, ok?
I’d personally like to sleep with Blood Simple, anyone with me? That and the Red Desert.
Now see, you’ve just gone and created a new thread topic: Movies You’d Like To Bone. Just wait.
The only downside is that then there will be ten “Movies Everyone Else Wants to Fuck But You Just Can’t Get It Up For” threads
Please don’t.
“bye.”
The setting for my meeting with Antonioni is London’s Academy Cinema, where I worked at the time (1964). The Academy was justly famous for showing some of the best films from all over the world, and my father,George Hoellering, ran it for 37 years, until his death in harness in 1980.He used the rents from offices in the same block to subsidise the films of directors like Antonioni and Bergman in whom he believed when their early films didn’t catch on.
Because my father was a film maker himself ( Kuhle Wampe with Brecht and Eisler; Hortobagy, Message from Canterbury,Shapes and Forms, Murder in the Cathedral with TS Eliot,etc) he was on friendly terms with a number of great directors, who often viewed him with respect and gratitude as a fellow artist.
Antonioni was one of these (Cassavetes and Milos Forman others) and I met him as I met them over lunch with my father and step-brother in the cinema’s restaurant after a special screening of Red Desert. This was 45 years ago, but I recall the gist of the conversation.
Red Desert is about a woman, Guiliana, played by the lovely Monica Vitti, who feels cut off from her family and the world, and has indeed just attempted suicide.
I first asked Antonioni why he had painted the trees and the grass, and he said that it was to make them fit into the industrial landscape. He didn’t just want to photograph natural colours, he wanted to create them to fit his canvas, just like a painter. This struck me at the time as parallel to the way that his films set out to ignore the usual conventions of film structure and relationships. Clearly Antonioni saw himself as creating a world from scratch, in this case allowing us to view his industrial setting in an entirely different way to the usual.
What grated with me at the time was his feeling that the lines and curves of factories could be more beautiful than the form of trees, and when Antonioni detected this, he froze.
Now I can understand why, but I was unable to at the time. The film affords an entirely new favourable spin on the modern wasteland, but because of my closed mine I was unable to see it. Rather than being discouraged by his silence, I asked him what he meant to say in the film about this landscape and its relationship to the people in it.’Meant to say’ did not go down well either, and was followed by a further thunderous silence, interrupted by my brother with a rapid and skilful change of subject.
The experience was unforgettable, and my conclusion is that Antonioni saw himself not just as an architect and film-maker, but as a great creative artist.
Thanks for sharing with us that great story re Antonioni, Andrew. It must have been a very stimulating household to grow up in, thanks to your father’s own film career and contacts. I also want to thank you for your kind words earlier re my own feeble writing attempts here, but can assure you that my age precludes any dramatic career change and that all my writing is now just done to develope my own insights. This site is my chief creative outlet for now, and I write just for myself and those I can share and exchange views, as we do here. There are a number of published film critics on site and I am always happy to learn from them. Please drop in at any time with your own viewpoints or personal perspective.
This thread makes the baby Jesus weep.
Thanks for that Bob, and will do.
To Jesse M: I agree with you that Antonioni’s work mainly fits into that category academics call High Modernism, rather than POST-Modernism, which is usually seen as a reaction to modernism. However, there are debates about Antonioni’s place in that schema, as well as over the definitions of “mod” and “postmod.”
Peter Brunette’s book on Antonioni refers to him as postmod, while my articles and UCLA dissertation compare him to the Modernist painters, novelists, and other artists.
Like Andrew Hoellering, I met Antonioni, albeit many years later — in 1982, just before the U.S. premiere of IDENTIFICATION OF A WOMAN. My interview with him can be found in MICHELANGELO ANTONIONI: INTERVIEWS, ed. by Bert Cardullo. People can probably read most of it on-line by looking up the book on Google Books.
Because of Sorry’s own high praise for the film, I finally got around to re-watching Zabriskie Point on a rather worn library vhs copy (no dvd was available). I saw the film upon its initial release at a downtown theatre that usually showed sleazy fare like The Stewardesses in 3-D. There were very few people in the audience, besides myself, as it was generally the type of cinema frequented by men in overcoats – if you get my meaning. If any of these ‘men’ were in the audience that afternoon, it probably would have been to see the extended sex romp in the desert, which is well into the film.
In any case, here is my current impression. Please note: Possible spoilers included.
The film now has a rather dated quality as it tries to identify with the sense of anarchistic yearnings of radical/hippie youths of the late 1960’s in America. It contrasts a group of student radicals organizing a campus take-over with an aging and cynical group of real estate speculators headed by Rod Taylor. First time actor Mark Frechette plays a bystander to the action who is drawn in and buys a gun. In the campus turmoil, an officer shoots a militant black student and is in turn shot and killed by a student gunman, who is identified by the media as Frechette. Typical of Antonioni, although Frechette is shown pointing a gun from a distance at the officer, he tells a young woman he meets later in the film, that his gun wasn’t loaded and that someone else shot the officer. In any case, Frechette is being pursued by the police and escapes in a small plane he steals at an airport.
At the beginning of the film, Antonioni uses the backdrop of billboards and an advertising copy of mannequins subbing for people in an ad for a new development Rod Taylor is promoting, to give a sense of artificiality and absurdity to the American environment he is satirizing. One even catches a glimpse of a picture of the statue of liberty on a billboard when Frechette is escaping from the police – all with ironical intent. So far, so good.
A young woman working for Rod Taylor – played by novice actress Daria Halprin – is driving her car to Phoenix from southern California to rendezvous with her boss. Frechette spies the car – as it glides along a deserted desert highway – from his plane, and proceeds to dive-bomb her car in true North by Northwest fashion – who knows for what reason. Eventually, he lands the plane and is introduced to Halprin. They have a romp around the desert – the Zabriskie Point of the title – and eventually have a long, playful love-making scene in the sand. This must have been a real ‘dust up’ for the two actors. This scene is about as relevant – or irrelevant – as the similar romp between Hemmings and the two young models in Blow Up. It is Antonioni’s own way of jazzing up the action – or inaction.
After Frechette paints the plane in psychedelic fashion, with help from an old-timer who appears out of nowhere, he decides to fly it back to the airport he stole it from, against the advice of Halprin’s character, who is now in love with him – of course. The two part, and she drives off as he flies back. [Major spoiler] When he flies into the airport, the police are waiting for him and fatally shoot him when his plane takes evasive action when landing. Halprin’s character hears this on the car radio and arrives at her destination – a posh ultra-modern house atop a cliff in the desert, where Rod Taylor is waiting for her. She is distraught, but explains nothing, eventually running out of the house. As she looks back, she imagines the house is ‘blowing up’. Certainly this could be seen as Antonioni’s own cinematic pun on his previous Blow Up.
This scene is brilliantly captured by Antonioni and his cinematographer – Alfio Contini. The slow motion, multiple angle approach that Antonioni and his cinematographer worked into the scene of the house exploding, and all the individual items, the books, etc, floating in air – like floating in space – is beautifully done. This is the enigmatic end to the film. This scene is the one thing I still recall – and about all I recalled – from my initial viewing. It is still effective and evocative, but doesn’t completely redeem the film that came before it.
To sum up: I believe the film still falls flat for me. In spite of Antonioni’s possible sympathy for the student radicals, the main character played by Frechette is just a bystander to it all who gets involved more by accident than intent. Neither he or the Halprin character really do any serious discussion on the social issues, but seem more intent on having it on with one another – and why not? The story is still rather trite, even though the acting is now passable in my second viewing of the film. However, when a veteran actor does come on scene, then the two novice actors look rather pathetic in comparison. The dialogue now often sounds very dated and contrived.
OK – we have two alienated youths who are a product of the consumer society that spawned them. They are turning their back on the hypocrisy of the older, corrupt generation represented by Rod Taylor and his business cronies. Still, this is in no way a critique, but just another way for Antonioni to indulge his own penchant for ‘lovely’ desert shots and poke some fun at contrasting American consumerism with the then current apathy of its youth. The film still feels rather empty to me – as empty as the desert landscapes that Antonioni has his characters frolic to the complete oblivion to all that is happening around them. Only the final shot of the house ‘blowing up’ in any way brings this film out of its own stasis. Sam Shepard who co-scripted this with Antonioni, did a much better job with the desert motif in his collaboartion with Wim Wenders in Paris, Texas.
Bump.
This thread—which I wasn’t around for a year ago—is as fascinatingly digressive, as simultaneously compelling and off-putting, as Zabriskie Point itself. If you haven’t read it in its entirety—from its erudite opening salvo to its long detour into The Twilight Zone (as House put it)—you really should.
I’ll read it — love Antonioni, and digressive threads. Thanks for the heads up, Z.!
Gets my vote for “MUBI’s worst thread”.
One of the few who gets Antonioni on the thread, was apparently insane.
@Robert — Lol! Hopefully that person didn’t go postal after the conversation ended…
Gets my vote for “MUBI’s worst thread
Interesting observation, Robert. A thread whose intention was to discuss a director in detail now is the worst thread on Mubi? And here’s me thinking it might be some silly thread like Is Poop the New Pee. I guess this thread can now be relegated back to the Mubi old thread graveyard.
I am glad we have such a fine arbiter of taste as Robert on the Forum. It is obvious that he and an ‘insane’ person have the goods on Antonioni and the OP and other posters to the thread were just wasting their time.
House of Leaves
What the hell are you attacking me for?
Anyway, here’s what it says in the Bill of Rights to the US Constitution: “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech…”
So not only was your point completely irrelevant to anything that was being said, it also comes off as unnecessarily hateful and ignorant. That has no place on this site, and that kind of thing should be moderated.