BLOWUP (1966)

This film which won Grand Prix Prize at Cannes made Italian Director Michelangelo Antonioni on centre stage for this strikingly different and technically innovative stylistic film cut loose with open ending left thrown into audience’s lap. It’s completely innovative way to reverse and disillusion audience’s film involvement.

Thomas is young, hot, charming fashion photographer and his possessed with the world less prone to his artistic talents. Amateur wannabe models, routine photo shoot and ennui life. Surprisingly he shoots few snaps of a mysterious couple in a park. This leads him to interesting twist of his life since the woman watched him in park and demanded the photographs back. He smartly prevents her and soon witnessed another man, pointing revolver and probably a murder in the photographs. Like audience, he too is lost in knowing what exactly happened in the park. Whether it’s murder or not is revealed in off the hook climax but for the time being it awakens the artist’s creative instinct to know the reality behind his camera and he’s happy because he’s creatively doing something which challenges his talent. But soon his leads got stolen by the lady and he’s lost again in mystery until in final scene where Antonioni put his final motif behind the film. The end left me confused and it’s truly ambiguous that I feel cheated in first instance. Thanks to internet, I’ve read some interesting analysis which made me grasp the final Yorker by Director.

The highlight of the film is not plot but style. The film is visually aesthetic in color cinematography and has intoxicating jazz background score with some revealing bare it all scenes. And yep, David Hammings is real chap you love to watch. For me it’s hard to rank it as great film for its baffling ambiguity. I still don’t understand the logic behind the real dead body which Thomas witnessed in park???

Rankings- 8/10