Blow Up

B-

Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni

Did I just give "Blow Up" a "B-"? I sure did. Michelangelo (his ghost, that is) will be PISSED when my reviews hit the big time and he finds out that I refused to fawn over one his most beloved and revered works. Sure...
"Blow Up" is not a bad movie but after hearing only good things about it, especially from critics I hold in great esteem such as Peter Brunette, I though this film was going to be a barnburner, which it unfortunately wasn't. Despite this, however, there is still alot to recommend in "Blow Up" and I can certainly understand why so much ink has been spilled writing about it.

David Hemmings plays a yeah-baby photographer in London in the swingin sixties, racing around town in his Bentley, taking photographs of mostly nude female models, getting laid, and generally fulfilling every stereotype anyone ever had about life in the hip and sexy sixties. His philandering is put on hold midway through "Blow Up" (and let me stress that "midway" is probably generous--the action only gets underway very late in the film) when he helps himself to some photos of Venessa Redgrave and her lover in a park and has them developed only to discover what he believes was a murder taking place at the time he took the photos. But was it really murder, or iws David Hemmings just crazy?

The subjective nature of reality is an issue that has been an alluring topic for directors to tackle since the very dawn of the cinema. It really has blossomed into a genre unto itself and a number of classic films fall into this particular category, films such as Kurosawa's "Rashoman" or Peter Weir's "Picnic at Hanging Rock." Just today I picked up a Korean film titled "A Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors' which promises me a similar essay on the elusive nature of reality. The appeal of such films is not hard to see, and I would argue that many directors are drawn towards such stories because they offer an opportunity to construct movies that are suspenseful, complex, and, above all else, open ended. Indeed, films like "Blow Up" are maddeningly open ended and it almost seems that directors like Antonioni like it that way because they can simply toss the film out there and let academics and laypeople interpret every which way, eventually giving the film a meaning of its own that may or may not have been intended by the director. Burnett in his commentary even admits that "not everything" adds up in "Blow Up," which is okay, I suppose, but there are obviously limits to how open ended you can make your story. All we ever learn in "Blow Up" is that a murder may or may not have happened and David Hemmings may or may not be imgaining things. The climx of the film, the infamous "mimes playing tennis" scene, simply confirms what we've suspected all along, namely that in "Blow Up," reality consists of what we choose to buy into as opposed to what is really there.
Having to sit through a two hour film to be given such a wishy washy message is a bit annoying, frankly. Nevertheless, the film is suspenseful and stylish enough that you don't just feel ripped off at the end by the rather lackluster payoff. Like most of Antonioni's films, "Blow Up" might not be perfect but from an aesthetic point of view there is enough of interest going on that is is worth a watch regardless of how you feel about the underlying "message" of the film.