Joshua Reed73
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joined Dec 2004
So, I guess we’re talking about the Uvecanje of Michelangelo Antonioni.
I remember the first time I saw it, back in the early eighties, watching on a local station in Chicago. I can still see the news anchor, Ante Peterlic, looking incredibly serious—he had this way of pressing his lips together tightly and forming a little triangle with his fingers before announcing, “Ladies and gentlemen, tonight we are presenting an anthology masterpiece by Michelangelo Antonioni, Blow-Up — Uvecanje.” And honestly, it wasn't just that one night; many times since then, I’ve found myself circling back to those exact words, and I suppose I have to admit he was absolutely right.
The film was actually based on Julio Cortázar's story “Devil's Ball,” which I’ve been hunting for years, and when I finally tracked it down, I was honestly a bit surprised by how much Antonioni drifted from the actual spirit of the original prose. I don't think it was just my take, either; apparently, even Cortázar himself felt that way, which supposedly pushed him to write a whole new story—Apocalypse in Solentiname—where he takes a somewhat cynical look back at how Antonioni handled his work. Interestingly enough, you can actually spot Cortázar in the movie itself, appearing in one of those photographs that Hemings shows the editor during their lunch at a restaurant. It’s right then that Hemings drops that line after looking through those photos of exhausted, disillusioned workers, saying, “I got something fab for the end, very peaceful, very still. Rest of the book is pretty violent, so it's better to end it like that."
What Hemings describes as something soothing is actually a murder. It’s recorded unconsciously and then, through a specific sequence of events, reconstructed by enlarging parts of the photographs. But once that reconstruction happens, it simply vanishes. Truth is deceptive; it reveals itself most clearly in the heavy grain of a photograph, yet at that very moment, it is lost forever. I guess it’s almost cynical how Hemings ends up in the studio—after finally realizing a murder took place and finding the body—staring at a photo taken at the highest magnification possible, which can prove absolutely nothing, while simultaneously forcing him to face exactly what happened. Once he uncovered the murder, it just disappeared. Reality isn't something tangible or provable. And it works the other way around, too.
So, at the very end, while they're watching this little tennis match played out by mimes—just a bunch of people swinging at nothingness—Hemings finally gives in to the game, agrees to play along, "catches" the non-existent ball, and... well, he actually hears it bounce.
In the works of Cortázar, the camera lens doesn't just record reality; it actually reshapes it. I guess the question he’s constantly wrestling with is whether art truly holds any power over our actual existence. His protagonist never really gets that certainty—he never quite knows if his work actually made an impact before the dark, gritty side of everyday life simply opens its jaws and swallows him whole. Then you look at Antonioni, where David Hemings finds himself facing the undeniable truth that he hasn't achieved anything at all, leaving him staring down a completely different vision of how fantasy bleeds into the mundane. Art and life, the real and the imaginary—it all feels like one and the same, or so both Cortázar and Antonioni seem to be telling us.
Today, nearly thirty years after it was filmed, Uvecanje feels somewhat charmingly old-fashioned in its portrayal of swinging London. Set against a soundtrack by Herbie Hancock, we see The Yardbirds along with that guy, Jimmy Page, who would go on to form Zeppelin just a few years later. It also marks the first time David Hemings appeared on screen alongside Vanessa Redgrave. The film actually snagged the Palme d'Or 1967, and because of its win, they established a jury prize that ended up going to Sase Petrovica's The Feather Collectors. After churning out a series of films exploring dehumanized modern societies—like Adventure, Nights, Eclipse, and Red Desert—I guess you could say Antonioni reached his peak with Uvecanje. What followed was a more or less failed attempt at critiquing American society with Zabriski Point, and then a more successful effort featuring Jack Nicholson, Profession: Reporter, which features that magical shot where the camera moves in and out through a hotel room window.
Following in the footsteps of Uvecanje, Coppola ended up making one of his four absolute best films—that's Blow-Up, though I suppose people usually think of Brian De Palma's Blow-Up starring John Travolta when they talk about that kind of vibe.
And finally, last but not least, there’s this local version of David Hemings wandering around. He’s always strutting about with a camera in hand, acting like some kind of expert while lecturing his friends on the proper way to drink espresso, and he goes by "Herr" or something like that. I guess you could wonder if he, too, has eventually reached the conclusion that in the frantic race between art and life, nobody actually holds an advantage.
