Africa and Antonioni's obscure gems

I have never been sure of how to formulate my response to Antonioni movies. My favorite directors are Tarkovsky, Bunuel and Bergman and in my humble opinion everyone else -- including my childhood favorites Ray and Kurosawa and the ever irresistible darling of intellectuals, Godard -- falls a step shorter of this triumvirate. Bergman praised Tarkovsky in 'The Magic Lantern' as someone, I am quoting from memory, who is roaming naturally in rooms on the doors of which Bergman has been hammering all his life. I think the same is true for the rest of the directors and these three. Maybe except for Robert Bresson.

As I continue to play this pointless game of categorization -- based purely on my subjective opinion, of course --in my mind, I try to put the rest of the great Directors in 2-3 more groups. (The absolute subjectivity of my categories is better illustrated by the following facts: I have not much ideas about Wajda or Dreyer as I have rarely seen any movies by them and I am a big fan of Paradjanov,Werner Herzog and Ozu but do not really like too many Passolini or Fellini or Eisenstein movies whereas the film academia would probably put a Fellini or a Eisenstein a thousand miles ahead of the eccentric genius of Herzog or the enigmatic poetry of Paradjanov's spiritual journey) . So I put Ray,Kurosawa,Truffaut,Ozu,Godard in one group and Herzog, Ghatak, Paradjanov in another group etc. Whenever I play this game I could never put Antonioni in any group.

I mean, he has a movie where a fashion photographer unknowingly enters in a Yardbird concert and he has a movie where a bored novelist (and a bored husband) is attracted to a society girl over a Broch novel. He has created 'Red Desert' , a magnificent portrait of existential ennui and spiritual emptiness, and he has created 'Zabriskie Point', an immature and over-simplified appreciation of counter-culture whose best attraction till date remains those early Pink Floyd songs.

'The Passenger', on the other hand is captivating. For whatever reasons best known to the studios it is not available in DVD format (so are a lot of other Antonioni movies) and no new VHS has been released for a while. Finally I managed to buy a used copy from Amazon. Watching 'The Passenger' and the last (and the least praised) of the trilogy -- the other two being L'Avventura and La Notte -- L'Eclisse , one can't help but wonder at his genuine attraction for Africa, less as a geo-political entity but more as an alternative mode of human existence which has, if nothing else, at least the solemnity of a profound mystery which, or the absence of which, is at the heart of Antonioni's aesthetic and his critique of modern society. The desert scenes in 'The Passenger' are strongly reminiscent of the few Camus short stories set in the North African Sahara. The depth of wonder expressed in those visuals trivialize the political corruption that is depicted later. In 'The Passenger', a famous but bored reporter finally finds the inspiration and the actual physical means of changing his identity to be able to create a new self in search of a way out of his malaise. In L'Eclisse, Africa comes via the memory of a woman (who is now a bored housewife) who spent her youth in Kenya, killing Hippos and dancing like the tribal women. She considers Kenya her home, is proud of its natural beauty but very critical of its people -- "there are 10 odd leaders who probably have studied in Oxford, but the rest of them are monkeys". Antonioni uses her character very subtly -- he contrasts it nicely with Monica Vitti's dance in tribal costume -- and there is a hint of ridicule (and sympathy) in the way she is treated.

L'Eclisse was released in 1962, on the verge of Kenya's independence, and even after all these years the western perception of Africa has remained more or less the same -- a large homogenized territory in perpetual crisis of famine, calamities, corrupt leaders, tribal fights and now, of course, AIDS. Africa continues to be viewed primarily as a problem whose salvation depends on the charity of well-meaning rock stars or the cultural evolution of the African societies. Even otherwise well-meaning and highly educated people tend to discuss 'the African problem' as if Africa is a small singular nation populated by a handful of races. The uniqueness of all the individual countries -- what is happening in Zimbabwe is drastically different from what is happening in Liberia -- and the sheer complexity of Africa as a geographical/political/cultural entity is conveniently ignored. Actually the only common thread between all the problems of 'Africa' is its colonial past.

Then there are writers like VS Naipul, a man of Indian origin who has grown up in Trinidad, who invents an Africa where everyone of color (may it be the Indian traders or the native African students) is devoid of grace, possibilities, redemption. That is the crux of his 'A Bend In The River'. A book that I should have not re-read.

Which Africa do you want?