Michelangelo Antonioni's "Blow-Up"

I've been accused of over-thinking movies on occasion.  Personally, I don't see how this is a bad thing - like, what's the alternative? Under-thinking them?  Surely at one time or another, you've watched a movie to its climax, looked over to whomever came with you and asked "but what did it all mean?" (or maybe that’s just me… or maybe you’re just not inquisitive enough…)  More often than not, that's not a good thing. After watching Michelangelo Antonioni's "Blow-Up" for the second time, I'm still asking myself that same question, but I'm not sure it's necessarily a bad thing. "Blow-Up" is one of those Greatest-Film-Ever movies, one that routinely shows up on lists published by various movie-loving entities and is dissected and studied in film schools and at film festivals. I had seen it once many years ago, back in the Dark Days of VHS pan-and-scan tapes played on two-head VCRs and 19-inch televisions (oh, the horror...), but Turner Classic Movies ran it again a while back as part of their 31 Days of Oscar schedule, and I was able to give it another look, this time on better equipment and with older and (hopefully) more mature eyes. 

The story follows a day in the life of Thomas (David Hemmings), a very young fashion photographer in London during the Swinging '60s. Thomas is extremely jaded for one so young (he can't be more than twenty-five), as we see his complete disdain for the women he photographs, as well as his feeling of superiority to the world around him. He doesn't care whom he keeps waiting or what he leaves behind when he decides to leave his current task and move on to the next thing that grabs his attention.  He spots a couple in a London park, a young woman (played by an almost-unbelieveably young Vanessa Redgrave) and an obviously-older man. The couple seem to frolic. Or are they quarreling? Thomas (and we) see them from just enough of a distance that we can't be sure. Voyeur-ishly, Thomas photographs them. The girl spots Thomas, confronts him, begs Thomas to give her the film. Thomas refuses, even telling her that it's not his fault that nobody has any privacy those days. She runs back into the park, but the man has vanished. The girl's efforts to get the roll of film from Thomas lead to a half-nude pot-smoking session between the two, after which the girl leaves believing she has the film, but Thomas still has it. He develops it, and what he begins to see is what moves the second half of the film. 

What is it that he sees? Was it really there? What brought about the look of fear in the girl's eyes seen in one of the photos? Is that blurred patch of light in the trees what we think it is? Thomas asks himself all of these questions, and more, in silence as he examines his photos, as do we. The genius of the sequence is that even without a word of dialogue, with just a solitary actor on screen and no sound other than Thomas' puttering about his lab, we know exactly what he is thinking and what the story in the photos is.  For those of you wondering just what the heck "editing" is, this is it.  Thomas spends the remainder of the day and into the night and following morning careening about London, searching for the girl (even spotting her momentarily at one point before she almost-magically melts into the background) and for an answer, but never finding one. 

So, what does it all mean? That question still lingers. Antonioni was nominated for a Best Director Oscar for this film, but the movie did not receive a Best Picture nod, and I can see why. The movie caused quite a stir in its day for the scenes of marijuana use and fleeting full-frontal nudity (both of which are very tame by today's standards), and critics of the day debated ad nauseam about the lack of a clear-cut ending, as well as what, if any, symbolism was supposed to be in the film's final scene (which I won't divulge...). I don't think any of that was Antonioni's point. While the shallowness of the London Mod scene of the time may have been the driving philosophy behind Thomas’ outlook on the world, I believe whether he witnessed a murder, and if he did, who may have committed it, are secondary to his being a changed man at the film's end, and seeing him awaken from his boredom and cynicism to become energized over something IS a conclusion, of a sort.