Watching "Blowup" is like inhaling a mentholyptus cough drop up your nose and directly into your skull. Visually it's exhilerating. And it will leave a lasting, if not slightly painful, imprint on your medulla oblongata.
The plot is very suspenseful, but that's not the primary focus here. The plot is about a hip fashion photographer of the trendy London elite who one day, purely by chance, snaps a picture of a possible murder. He investigates the crime by--as the title suggests--blowing up the photo. But this seemingly simple act leads him into a labyrinthine tangle of reality, illusion and perception. As director Michelangelo Antonioni commented:
"He wants to see something more closely. But when he enlarges the object it breaks up and disappears. So there's a moment when one grasps reality, but the next moment it eludes us. This is roughly the meaning of Blow-Up."
That quote is the real story. And even if you don't fully grasp what he meant, if you keep it in mind as you're watching the film then certain cryptic things will fall into place. The mysterious obnoxious mimes running through the city are deeply symbolic of an alternate fantasy that carves its way right through the middle of regular urban life. The very cool concert scene featuring the Yarbirds (Jeff Beck and a young Jimmy Page in his pre-Led Zeppelin days) is confounding but again deeply symbolic with the audience lulled into a bizarre mob reality bordering on a zombie apocalypse. And of course there is our protagonist's entire career of molding and manipulating human dolls (fashion models) to suit his own artistic reality. But the murder mystery throws a severe psychological wrench into things, because suddenly he loses control of his own perception, instead being led deeper and deeper into the abstract grainy forms of the blown up picture. Whose reality is he in now?
This movie is Antonioni's 2nd color film following the excellent "Red Desert". He tells the story through vivid colors, often physically manipulated by painting streets, houses and even trees to bring out a palette that fits his own artistic narrative. He did this in "Red Desert" also, but while that film presented almost an otherworldy scifi look, here in "Blowup" he manipulates colors in order to recreate a vivid but believable reality. So if you see what's going on here, you realize that this movie itself--as well as YOU the viewer--is all part of the story. We're watching a movie that manipulates reality in order to tell the story of an artist who manipulates reality but ultimately loses control of what he is seeing.
Did I just lose you? Good because I think I just lost myself. "Blowup" is the kind of flick you can watch over & over, each time seeing, feeling and imagining something different. Like the main character in the story unraveling the mystery of images. And when that happens you'll know that Antonioni's little magic trick was a stunning success.
The plot is very suspenseful, but that's not the primary focus here. The plot is about a hip fashion photographer of the trendy London elite who one day, purely by chance, snaps a picture of a possible murder. He investigates the crime by--as the title suggests--blowing up the photo. But this seemingly simple act leads him into a labyrinthine tangle of reality, illusion and perception. As director Michelangelo Antonioni commented:
"He wants to see something more closely. But when he enlarges the object it breaks up and disappears. So there's a moment when one grasps reality, but the next moment it eludes us. This is roughly the meaning of Blow-Up."
That quote is the real story. And even if you don't fully grasp what he meant, if you keep it in mind as you're watching the film then certain cryptic things will fall into place. The mysterious obnoxious mimes running through the city are deeply symbolic of an alternate fantasy that carves its way right through the middle of regular urban life. The very cool concert scene featuring the Yarbirds (Jeff Beck and a young Jimmy Page in his pre-Led Zeppelin days) is confounding but again deeply symbolic with the audience lulled into a bizarre mob reality bordering on a zombie apocalypse. And of course there is our protagonist's entire career of molding and manipulating human dolls (fashion models) to suit his own artistic reality. But the murder mystery throws a severe psychological wrench into things, because suddenly he loses control of his own perception, instead being led deeper and deeper into the abstract grainy forms of the blown up picture. Whose reality is he in now?
This movie is Antonioni's 2nd color film following the excellent "Red Desert". He tells the story through vivid colors, often physically manipulated by painting streets, houses and even trees to bring out a palette that fits his own artistic narrative. He did this in "Red Desert" also, but while that film presented almost an otherworldy scifi look, here in "Blowup" he manipulates colors in order to recreate a vivid but believable reality. So if you see what's going on here, you realize that this movie itself--as well as YOU the viewer--is all part of the story. We're watching a movie that manipulates reality in order to tell the story of an artist who manipulates reality but ultimately loses control of what he is seeing.
Did I just lose you? Good because I think I just lost myself. "Blowup" is the kind of flick you can watch over & over, each time seeing, feeling and imagining something different. Like the main character in the story unraveling the mystery of images. And when that happens you'll know that Antonioni's little magic trick was a stunning success.