Review of Red Desert (1964) by Al M — 04 Aug 2010
Like Kurosawa, Antonioni was a master of black and white film who one could not imagine abandoning a medium that shined so brightly under their direction. However, also, like Kurosawa, Antonioni's first color film, Red Desert, demonstrates the true potential that color offers to the cinema.
As when one watches Kurosawa's Kagemusha or Ran, Red Desert demonstrates exactly how powerful, symbolic, and complexly beautiful the use of color can be when under the direction of a true master. Despite being n color, Antonioni manages to film the factories and the industrial wastelands surrounding them in a grey palette.
By giving the characters vibrant colored clothes, life and passion stands out in sharp relief from the colorless, drab, life-robbing machines of industry. As always, Antonioni is a master of filming landscapes, buildings, and objects, and he brings his use of color brilliantly into these depictions as well.
Against this backdrop, Antonioni unspools a tale of alienation, depression, neurosis, and repressed desire. In a world where machines replace nature and money becomes more important than life and its various passions, then it becomes almost impossible to find any meaning or truth in life.
As per usual for Antonioni, Red Desert concerns the meaninglessness of the postmodern world and our feeble attempts to inscribe truth upon a fundamentally empty existence. Antonioni returns to this familiar themes in a new way with his usage of color and creates a beautiful and haunting cinematic masterpiece.
This review of Red Desert (1964) was written by Al M on 04 Aug 2010.
Red Desert has generally received very positive reviews.
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