The Passenger

Jack Nicholson stars in this "espionage thriller" from Michelangelo Antonioni. I place it in quotes because it's almost useless to describe an Antonioni film in terms of genre, because he only takes the barest traces of the genre and then proceeds to make his own film. It's by no means thrilling, nor is it boring. Nicholson is a reporter in Africa who, for one reason or another, switches identities with a dead man (perhaps in order to feel liberated). It turns out that the man he switched with is an international gun runner. Much of the films is a travelogue through Europe with Jack and Maria Schneider who gives a wonderful performance. Antonioni does more with photographic space -- negative space in particular -- than probably any other filmmaker. It feels empty, even with people in the frame, and speaks volumes about his construction of reality (see Blow Up). This film, however, is lesser Antonioni, with the exception of a bravura piece of camera work that composes the second to last shot of the film -- probably one of the most spectacular shots in the history of the medium, if I may be so bold. Antonioni is a true orginal and often difficult to understand, but then that could be because his films are often about alienation and the difficulty of understanding and the fragmentation of reality.