the Passenger

23 December: dreams of paint, thick sleep like thickly slathered paint.
Viewed Antonioni's film, the Passenger. Maria Schneider, a boyish waife in gorgeous mid-seventies cotton skirts
that flow flowers,a looker and hard to not look at, literally attaches herself to Nicholson, who's character, we discover,
takes the identity of a dead man, and in doing so, kills off his own identity. This work is full of post-modernisms, gorgeous cinematography/photography, and post-existential writing. A post-structuralist wet dream, perhaps.
For me, it bears all the greatness of Italian film-making, and a good combination of cinema verite', 70's French Connection drama/chases/car scenes, and backdrops that might have come from Richard Misrach's Desert Canto's.

We are complicit in all we see, as viewer/voyeurs, and so, on the journey of life, we can have many roles as we are passing through, touring, traveling, moving, searching, looking, discovering, covering, etc.
We could be simultaneously at the wheel and also passengers.

One of many questions this film asks is, who are we on the journey, what are we doing, and why. What is the journey. Does it have a beginning or end. What if the journey is simple an endless circle, a driving around, a gita or tour. What are the contingencies. What are the interdependences, and interrelations.
Are we the drivers or the passengers in our own lives. What is the role of driver, passenger, tourist, policeman, hotel manager etc. These banal roles have very specific implications, and their borders blur or become more exaggerated as they come into proximity to one another. The subjective relationship is always in flux.

What happens when we become someone else, how do we handle the questions and dilemmas, tasks, and charges of someone else's life. How do we judge others, and would we do any better in their shoes with all the acoutrements of their life then they did. Could we survive their life, could we save the life of another by living it, and perhaps changing its course. Is revival possible. Is a resurrection possible. What are the consequences of a possible resurrection, what are the responsibilities, contradictions, impossibilities. The film also asks us to ask ourselves, what do we do when we learn of some horrible crimes against humanity, do we remain detached and watch it like a movie, or do we change our lives, take a stand, take action, become involved, act differently. Again, all of the film metaphors are questions in and of themselves in what becomes a circuitous game of questions and answers, truth or dare.

Here the medium is the content, and the character and narrative are supports for a self-reflexive journey. Gelatin and light, delicate and sophisticated, temporal and maleable. Characters are actors as stand-ins for people, are reduced to documents and costumes, which can be switched, disposed of, and only a cover/covering. Language is also analysed and becomes pure medium, pure cinematic paint to slather on the veil of the screen, where layers of time, place, and people are peeled away and become transparent.

Meanings multiply and reproduce themselves in this liquid medium of film, and through fluid metaphor and use. The dialogue is a licking or tonguing process, always erotic, always moist, so counter balancing the dryness of daily life and perhaps, moistening, postponing the cracked, hard, and dust of death. The desert is all consuming, and vision occur so we cannot tell if what we see is real or a mirage, an appearance. Our lives and societies are structured around the visual, and those appearances, and the rule of the day determined by our perception of those things, which derive from our fears and desires at the moment. So the plot and characters are vehicles for truth, as they can shift in appearance, yet carry the same or different baggage or passengers.

In the film, there is a wonderful display of cars, including the Citroen (the Lemon), the Renault Quattre, the Cinquecento, the Ape, the Peugot sedan, a small Fiat, and a regular van, they are all small, modest, everyday transportation seen in many European countries. The only anomaly is the American car, which Nicholson drives, white with bright red leather seats and a top that exposes the faces and heads of tits passengers. The automobile is the mode to get the self from one place to another, to shift gears, to go backwards and forwards in a seemingly linear fashion, confined to roads, yet able to deviate. Cars are not always able to overcome the slipping, arid sands, however, and in the end, one might have to walk and survive the elements without speed and comfort. Such is life, bumps in a road, curves, unexpected holes, other traffic, and other dangers and risks.

Relationship is also under scrutiny. We construct and deconstruct our own lives daily. We throw the dice and take chances, we make sacrifices and compromises in order to survive and also get our needs and wants met. We must create strategies to overcome fears and challenges that thwart our chosen path. If we live in isolation, we will not confront ourselves, our true humanity, and it is in relationship, that we can live and die more fully. Then, sometimes, the meaning of life seems irretrievable, lost, and simply out of focus. How can we extend life and live it fully, when there is a danger around every corner, some road block or impediment to our movement. Futility cannot override human being's longing and need to live whatever the circumstances. This existential questions never seem to become answerable or more palatable.
I find them fascinating and infinitely ponderable, rather than frustrating.

So, The Passenger is intellectually and visually orgasmic, and after the petit morte, bathed in the light of these filmic projections and lingual stimulations, we are left with our own conversations, relationships, and battles, our own identities from which we cannot hide, run from, or cover with wardrobe accessories, or change, unless we dig deeper into our own humanity and personal compost. It is up to us to work the film of our own lives, look and frame, cut and paste. If we want to. Or, we could watch and replay what's there, editing only the most salient bits, and leaving out the long hours of waiting, acrid sweat and rancid cigarette breath smells, scratches of dust and sand in sensitive nostrils, eyes, and mouth, the sting of a desert insects, and the endless thirst for water of life.