Blow-Up
Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1960s film about perception is an astounding piece of film-making. It centres on a successful fashion photographer, Thomas (David Hemmings). The plot of the film involves his accidental photography of a murder, but Antonioni is much more interested in the relationship between art and people.
Thomas lives in a world of quietness, punctuated by bursts of sound occurring when he’s with the fashion models he photographs for a living. Throughout the film, he periodically encounters a mime group who mime things which are defined by sound: cheering, playing a game.
After taking some pictures in a park, he comes home and develops the photographs. In one of them, he notices something strange, so enlarges it. It appears to be a dead body, but it is hard to be sure. He repeatedly enlarges the photo, trying to discover what is there, but each time he does, the picture becomes more indecipherable. Finally, he has a huge print which is just a mass of dots.
Antonioni seems to be telling us that it is futile to try to understand or deconstruct art. The unsubtle fashion models make lots of noise, trying to be noticed. In contrast, the mime artists are content to produce their more complex art without fanfare and without drawing attention to themselves.
In the same way, when Thomas tries to decipher and understand the picture, the more he tries, the more muddled and incomprehensible the picture becomes.
I’m sure Antonioni would disapprove of this piece.