Film

User reviews of this film

• Technoguy said...

  Posted on Jul 04 2008 18:30 La Notte
  The middle of the ‘incommunicativity trilogy’. If art is life squeezed through a repression. Then Antonioni is Fellini sqeezed through a repression. La Dolce Vita came a year before with Mastroianni ,one of his key roles as the playboy
  journalist. Here he is a serious intellectual,a novelist whose marriage is all but
  over, exhausted with his life and writing.Similarly this film has no truck with the divine as Fellini’s film does,albeit only if to say the age of faith is over. This is
  a secularist’s film with all the appurtenances of modern life like modern architecture,rockets,gatherings of people,book openings.We get 24 hours in the life of this married couple.Alienation is a strong theme,uncertainty.People are onlookers in their own lives.There is a concentration on their inner lives but
  they have no language to communicate it.As on of the characters says ‘when I
  try to communicate,love goes’. Morality is old fashioned,they carry the baggage of their emotions through the checkpoint of the modern world. Antonionni
  uses the dynamics of architecture,horizontals and verticals to show the backdrop
  to a world that’s in transition between the old and new. They cling to a pathetic
  remnant of the old codes. As a couple they do not engage with each other but turn up together at book signings and parties.They are open to other relationships but neither is unfaithful. They go out together but face in different directions,drift apart,go off with other people. Moreau acts as Lidia who goes
  on solitary walks around the streets of Milan. She meets young men fighting,
  she demands that it stops after observing it awhile;she also sees another grouping of young men setting off rockets.We are drawn into her personality
  as she looks outwards and we are drawn into reacting through her. Giovanni
  attracts a rich business man with his creative talents.The business world is seen
  as glamorous,at the forefront of change. He is attracted towards this man’s
  daughter(Monica Vitti) Valentina and they play with the compact. However
  there is no adultery and Giovanni maybe feels the job offer is like selling out.
  Nothing much happens at the rich people’s party apart from people getting wet
  or diving into the swimming pool fully clothed. The couple are essentially kind and decent people and treat each other well. They reach out to each other with
  small gestures but do not connect like a cat looking at a statue.they themselves
  being like objects in the landscape. Their last grope on a golf course may be an
  act of desperation to camouflage the fact they are holed in a bunker.Or maybe not.
  La Notte
  The middle of the ‘incommunicativity trilogy’. If art is life squeezed through a repression. Then Antonioni is Fellini sqeezed through a repression. La Dolce Vita came a year before with Mastroianni ,one of his key roles as the playboy
  journalist. Here he is a serious intellectual,a novelist whose marriage is all but
  over, exhausted with his life and writing.Similarly this film has no truck with the divine as Fellini’s film does,albeit only if to say the age of faith is over. This is
  a secularist’s film with all the appurtenances of modern life like modern architecture,rockets,gatherings of people,book openings.We get 24 hours in the life of this married couple.Alienation is a strong theme,uncertainty.People are onlookers in their own lives.There is a concentration on their inner lives but
  they have no language to communicate it.As on of the characters says ‘when I
  try to communicate,love goes’. Morality is old fashioned,they carry the baggage of their emotions through the checkpoint of the modern world. Antonionni
  uses the dynamics of architecture,horizontals and verticals to show the backdrop
  to a world that’s in transition between the old and new. They cling to a pathetic
  remnant of the old codes. As a couple they do not engage with each other but turn up together at book signings and parties.They are open to other relationships but neither is unfaithful. They go out together but face in different directions,drift apart,go off with other people. Moreau acts as Lidia who goes
  on solitary walks around the streets of Milan. She meets young men fighting,
  she demands that it stops after observing it awhile;she also sees another grouping of young men setting off rockets.We are drawn into her personality
  as she looks outwards and we are drawn into reacting through her. Giovanni
  attracts a rich business man with his creative talents.The business world is seen
  as glamorous,at the forefront of change. He is attracted towards this man’s
  daughter(Monica Vitti) Valentina and they play with the compact. However
  there is no adultery and Giovanni maybe feels the job offer is like selling out.
  Nothing much happens at the rich people’s party apart from people getting wet
  or diving into the swimming pool fully clothed. The couple are essentially kind and decent people and treat each other well. They reach out to each other with
  small gestures but do not connect like a cat looking at a statue.they themselves
  being like objects in the landscape. Their last grope on a golf course may be an
  act of desperation to camouflage the fact they are holed in a bunker.Or maybe not.

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• Abhibrata said...

  Posted on Jan 28 2008 15:29 The film depits the mid-life crisis faced by a middle class intellectual couple. Apparently the film seems slow paced and repeatation of the same thoughts and revelations of an already irrevocably broken marriage. However a closer look reveals more subtle aspects of love , marriage and persistent understanding in longstanding and often assumed relationships. The director also touches upon the insecurities emerging from the fear of lonliness in the characters involved. Definitely not of the best by the director, most of the cinematic metaphors are too blatant and repeptative. there are too many instances to drive home that the marriage is over, which becoms very clear to the audience pretty early in the film, and the audience is left asking for "what happened next?". However in the defence of the director, the film takes multiple perspetives at the dead relationship. More like a post mortem of an already dead person and the various perspective...lust,love,societal confusions and helplessness.

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