i finished watching red desert. in the supplements antonioni says he has been to the place 100 times and witnessed its transformation from a natural world to an industrial world. the last time he visited he had the strangest feeling, he'd been struck by the transformation of the region. he says it reminds him of progress, you can't really be against progress, there's something inexorable about progress. it's like revolution. some people suffer horribly, but some adapt. there are those who can't adapt, so they just fall apart. but there are aspects of that world that he even finds beautiful. of course he painted whatever he found unbeautiful. it is antonioni's red desert. he goes on to say he finds the humanscape more interesting than the forest on the other side. but clearly his characters are suffering in that denatured and polluted landscape. imagination fueled by contradiction. it seems he is mourning aesthetically. being able to make your own red desert must be immeasurably better than simply living in another's, or feeling it inexorably grow up around you.
this was in 1964, 54 years ago. a lot of those industrial landscapes have probably been superseded by post industrial progress. it would be interesting to see a documentary about the same landscape, humanscape, now. with flashbacks. what if another antonioni that was born in 1964 say came along and made a film about the transformation of red desert over the decades since red desert? there is only anonioni. i was thinking about similar landscapes today, toxic waste landscapes, and they are far more ugly and horrifying, but perhaps that is an affect of proximity and the added 50 years of toxic progress.