Page 60 - Cinematic Thinking Philosophical Approaches to the New Cinema

50 Alison Ross

only a small span of time; Locke's projects do not extend beyond the epi-
sodic structure of a scene. Even the continuity of his evasion of pursuit
in the latter parts of the film does not regulate the final episodes with
overall continuity, and in each of these episodes a sense of languor is the
dominant mood. Many of the scenes show Locke waiting for people who
do not appear (this is the motif with which the film commences, even
prior to Locke's becoming Robertson) or fleeing from people who are
waiting for Robertson, such as his wife and his producer, whom he does
not wish to see.
What is foregrounded by the languor-ridden mood, but above all
by the scenes constructed around the motif of waiting, is the question
of whether the "project" of living a life reduced to the immediate is at all
compatible with endowing such a life with meaning. 19 Indeed, the con-
trast between the equation that fuses identity with the coding of experi-
ence as habitual on one side, and the equation that fuses the evasion of
codes in the project of the loss of identity with death on the other, creates
a constellation in which the film confronts the idea of a meaningful life.
The Passenger shows abstract ideas, such as the dispersion of iden-
tity in time or the relinquishing of identity, as a "project." It remains to
ask what insights and limitations follow from the way Antonioni presents
such ideas and how this film presents these ideas in an "experienceable"
20
way? Once again The Passenger may be usefully compared to Antonioni's
other films on these points.
Moral values, motivations, moods, and feelings cannot take a spe-
cific form but may only be "shown." Meanings of such kinds are able
to be experienced in aesthetic presentations, which make accessible ideas
21
not able to be explored discursively. Similarly, temporal characteristics of
experience, such as waiting, or the agency of time as a force of dispersion
over identity can be shown in aesthetic presentations. Film, moreover, is
the ideal medium for the presentation of ideas of time on account of its
capacity to spatialize temporal forms. 22
Antonioni's cinema attempts to give such ideas an experienceable
form. Films such as Lavventura show the impasse between values and ex-
istence. In Ildeserto rosso color is used to show moods and feelings but also
the contrast between the time of the present and the outmoded beliefs and
feelings of those who inhabit it. In The Passenger the abstract project of the
loss of one's identity is made accessible to the audience as an experience
by virtue of techniques that "present" the passing of time. This project is