movies

my username is taken from a classic 1975 Antonioni film which deserves a post of praise at the very least. The Passenger or  Professione: Reporter was an amazing film by the Italian director Michaelangelo Antonioni which dealt with among other things the nature of identity, self knowledge and the search for truth during long travels. Jack Nicholson plays the reporter from an English news agency sent to cover gun running rebels in Africa but soon finds himself stuck and subsequently assumes the identity of a dead man he had interviewed in his hotel. He begins carrying out the appointments and meetings of the dead man in cities across Europe (Barcelona, Munich) as an attempt to discover more about his mystery as well as escape from his own life.

The film is essential viewing for anyone who loves travel- not just to Europe or Africa but anywhere where the journey is part of the destination and the enrichment comes not from the location but how you are affected by it.

I've watched the film dozens of times in theaters as well as video and before my trip out west, the romantic ideal of travel was tempered by my habitual viewing of it. The film ends with an amazing single take shot summarizing the end of the protagonists' journey and life. Those remaining 'hardly knew him', including his wife who has been pursuing his alternate identity, searching for her husband and the truth.

In my own travels there was no awakening or self discovery made apart from the idea that you cannot ultimately escape yourself no matter how far you travel. You can leave your parents, your immediate circle of friends, the people, possessions and objects that surround you on a daily basis but your own faults, fears and doubts creep up from inside to sneak up and bite you in surprising places.

I stumbled on this revelation in the first stop of my journey , Los Angeles. Before they built the Kodak Motion Picture center near Sunset blvd, there was a Hollywood Holiday Inn where I stayed for a couple of nights. I could see the El Capitain theater from my window and I had rented a minivan for a nice trek down Sunset to the ocean. While in the lobby alone, I was looking around and saw a young teen couple cuddling on a padded bench near the stairs. I waited there for a bit just to dwell on my own loneliness and self-loathing, half expecting someone to jostle me out of my self absorbed funk while perusing my travel guide book with map.

The Passenger is significant to me for another reason; one of the earliest examples of ASMR experience for myself; The scene in the church  in Munich, where Locke is confronted by the two nationals for the gun-running deal. It's part of a beautiful sequence where Antonioni flashes the past, present and fabricated future in one location, meant to echo David's frustrations and troubled history with his wife. One of the African nationals takes the carbon copy plans and diagrams of the guns meant to be shipped. The audio is of the old form of thick, coated carbon paper which has a distinct sound and weight. I must have watched that scene 10 times in one viewing , rewinding back and playing it repeatedly. The sound echoed to a memory I had of discovering papers in a briefcase my father used when he was alive in the late60s/early seventies. They were hard copy documents outlining his illness and the doctor's crude diagnoses back then. Parkinsons disease was still being researched and not completely understood , so muscular deformans and general neurological disorders were the foreign terms for a 9 year old mind. The paper was heavy and made coarse ruffling noise. The idea that sound could give me ASMR sensations would be ironic to a crude mind but the idea that it hit at a nerve which was very much a part of me and my limited knowledge of my dad was far more significant.

listening @ that time: "perfect circle" by REM
watching: Il Professione: Reporter
reading @ that time: maps