If I could, I would deify this film. What most impresses me about a film is exhibited here to the utmost: mood. After this film is done, I feel completely destroyed. If you did not feel alienated from the world around you when you started, you will be by the end. If you were feeling alienated when you started, then you may just be contemplating suicide when the film ends. This mood is absolutely crushing. It affects me more than any other film, with some exceptions that are equal with it - 2001, Persona, The Passion of Joan of Arc, and maybe a couple of others that I can't think of offhand. Red Desert is a perfect film. If anything else, at least one must be able to appreciate the masterful visual composition. If you're dismissing this film, you're really missing something. 10/10

"Red Desert" is director Michelangelo Antonioni's first color film, and he doesn't hold back. Much like Bergman's "Cries & Whispers" this film proves that a master of b&w medium can be just as impressive and innovative with all the wavelengths between b and w. But I'm getting ahead, first let's have a plot summary:

A woman who is suffering from a nonspecific mental disorder (or as her husband flippantly describes "her gears don't quite mesh") attempts to navigate an increasingly conflicted existence against the backdrop of a town which itself is suffering a conflict of nature vs industrialism. Like Antonioni's 3 prior films with Monica Vitti (L'avventura, La notte, L'eclisse),there are prominent sexual themes but NOT 'sexual' meaning 'erotic' or even 'romantic'. The themes explored are more about the dysfunctional ways in which men and women--primarily the male characters--use sexual attraction as a failed proxy for real human connections.

That's a mouthful, hard to describe in half a paragraph. You'll see it almost immediately in an early scene where Monica's character "Giuliana" is having a terrifying anxiety attack in the middle of the night and her husband initially tries to comfort her with a hug but quickly overshoots the runway and starts making sexual advances on the poor woman. This is something to watch for later in the film when the scenario repeats itself in a different way. Giuliana's reaction is chilling to watch, particularly if you look at her hands as she silently contorts herself in a way that conveys not simply her revulsion at the male's approach but perhaps more of a deep conflict within herself, fighting the very concept of intimacy.

And all the while we see unsettling--but gorgeous--images of nature fighting and losing to industrialism. We see nature replaced with a new "tree line" of smoke stacks and commercial silos. But this is the interesting part: Antonioni doesn't merely bash us over the head with the bumper sticker mentality of "factories suck" but these images are beautiful in their own way, and we are also shown majestic images of radio towers aimed at the sky. "What are those for?" Giuliana asks a worker who is high up on a tower. "So we can listen to the stars," the man joyfully answers. "Can I listen?" Giuliana asks. "Sure, but you have to climb up here." To which she laughs and shakes her head as if that's never gonna happen.

And thus Antonioni paints for us a complex intersection between the old world and the new, or nature vs. science, or tradition vs. progress. There's no simple answer. It's a tangle of complications that makes you start to realize how our protagonist Giuliana--perhaps a representation of humankind itself--may lose her mind under the strain.

"Red Desert" is the sort of film that sophisticated folks might say they enjoy though the common person wonders why the film what made in the first place. Although my taste often runs to foreign language films, I find myself siding with the average viewer--wondering if there is any point to this film. And, as I sit here and write my review, I wonder why Antonioni would make a film that would have little, if any, interest to most viewers--though this can be said about several of his other films (such as his inexplicable "Zabriskie Point").

The film is set in a toxic wasteland of a town. There is a huge factory there and almost everything is grey and dead. The water is a cesspool, a boat arriving at the port has some sort of plague and yellow smoke is belched by the smoke stacks. It is truly an awful place. Giuliani (Monica Vitti) lives there with her son and husband and the camera follows her throughout the movie. She is bored and mentally ill and spends pretty much the whole film complaining about her life, staring into space and questioning her existence. There really isn't a whole lot more to the film than that, though Corrado (Richard Harris) pops in and out of the movie and sticks around long enough to have sex with screwy Giuliana.

Overall, this is a dark, depressing and seemingly pointless film. Perhaps it is supposed to be some statement about life itself and interpersonal alienation, though frankly, I think this is ridiculous. Life is good and sweet--and seeing an awful film like this seems like a waste of time.