SoftInloveRox Horrible, fascist and poorly acted

Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.

PiraBit if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Ella-May O'Brien Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

antoniocasaca123 It is difficult to explain the magic of Antonioni's films. Like many other films of this fantastic filmmaker, this "passenger" is also a slow film, with long sequences without dialogues but full of meanings, that addresses the same themes of the emptiness of the human condition, of alienation, of the attempt to escape a certain existence, the bankruptcy of relationships, the inability to communicate. The filmmaking of this filmmaker is beautiful and unique, it has a hypnotic effect on us, viewers. Even when he films banal things, we are delighted and dazzled by what we see. In this film, the final 7-minute sequence filmed from the bedroom window where Jack Nicholson stands is anthology.

jefferino I saw Antonioni's "The Passenger" in September or October 1976, at the beginning of my freshman year at Columbia. It was the first "art house film" I ever saw, well before I'd heard that term. I was from Cincinnati, where apparently they didn't have such things. I had just turned 19, or was about to. I was taking a writing class with Kenneth Koch, discovering Frank O'Hara and Rimbaud, and doing everything I could to peel or dissolve the suburban Midwestern scales from my eyes. In that pursuit, this movie was as important as the LSD I would drop for the first time a few weeks later. Not that it was hallucinatory—just the opposite, in fact… though in both cases, perhaps, it was "the visuals" that I liked best.The film was playing at an auditorium on the Barnard campus, and I remember walking over there alone, being completely amazed by what I saw, and hurrying back to my Spartan dorm room to write excitedly about it in a notebook that is now long gone. I don't remember what I wrote, but I know it wasn't focused on Jack Nicholson, who plays a television reporter disillusioned with his life and work. Nor did I write much about the plot involving switched identities, riveting though it was. If I wrote about these things at all, it would have had to do with the way Antonioni de-emphasized Nicholson's movie star status and took the weight off a plot that would have been handled ponderously in a Hollywood movie, accompanied by ridiculous, tension-building background music. (I'd seen "Jaws" just the year before, which suddenly felt like ages ago.)In fact, everything in "The Passenger" had a different emphasis than it did in the movies I had grown up seeing; everything about it felt refreshingly "un-American." Nothing was explained: I was as clueless about what was going on as Nicholson's character and, like him, had to figure things out as I went along—discovering, with him, that he'd taken on the life of a gunrunner in Africa (like Rimbaud!). The film's pacing was slow, giving me time to think and, especially, to look. I was astonished by the long stretches of silence during which no one spoke at all. The minimalist approach made the movie feel not smaller but more expansive, making room for something else, which filled me with a calm excitement: beauty. I remember being struck, in the early scene in which Nicholson's character breaks down, by the gorgeous shots of the salmon-colored dunes against the blue sky in the saturated light of the African desert—then, in the scene where Nicholson's character changes identities with the dead man in the room across the hall, by the turquoise walls of the hotel hallway he drags the body through, and by the contrasting yellow doors. If you haven't seen the movie, this must sound crazy, but these, I think, are the things I wrote about in my notebook. And I'm sure I wrote about the shot of Nicholson from above, leaning out the window of an aerial tram and slowly flapping his arms like wings above the shimmering blue water of Barcelona's harbor. And the shot of Maria Schneider kneeling backwards in the red leather back seat of a convertible, spreading her arms and smiling as the plane trees lining both sides of a country road flicker by, seemingly without end. And the long, penultimate shot in which the camera (instead of focusing on the murder taking place) seems to move right through the bars of a hotel room window out into a dusty town square like something from a de Chirico painting.Of course, this would have all been written with the exuberance of my nineteen-year-old self, and I'm sure that notebook entry, if I read it now, would induce both nostalgia and embarrassment. I wasn't inclined to interpret these images so much as bask in the way they opened me up to another way of seeing. When I watch the movie now, in middle age, I notice many other things, among them the theme of not being able to escape oneself. But one of the things I'm glad I can't escape, or at least forget, is the intensity of my first encounter.First published in "New Ohio Review," copyright Jeffrey Harrison.

blanche-2 Lately I just haven't been able to hit it right with my film rentals. This is yet another example.Lest all of you find me an idiot, I'll say up front that I really love Blow-Up, also from this team, along with dozens of other films. This just wasn't one of them.The story is that David Locke (Jack Nicholson), a reporter, is sent to Africa to write about activities there. While in a cheap hotel, he finds the dead body of someone he knows slightly, a man named Robertson. Locke is obviously miserable with his life because he takes this man's identity, puts the dead body in his room, and everyone thinks he's the one who died.This man, Robertson, had an airport locker number written down -- obviously this is before 9/11, when they got rid of the lockers. Inside Robertson finds a bunch of papers with gun drawings, and later he is approached by two men who ask them for the papers. Turns out Robertson was running guns and being paid a large amount of money.Robertson/Locke picks up with a young woman (Maria Schneider) who tags along with him. When he finds out that a reporter friend of Locke's is looking for him, Robertson, he gets the girl to help him escape. They take off together.However, Locke's wife has discovered the switch and everyone is after him -- the terrorists want Robertson, Locke's wife wants to know what's going on, and she has the police with her.This had the makings of an exciting story but instead it was long, boring, without much dialogue, but with beautifully framed shots and interesting locations, plus a good performance by Nicholson.I freely admit I don't understand the appeal of a film like this. It had no energy, no pulse, and I didn't feel anything for the characters. It's always films like this that get huge scores on IMDb and are hailed as masterpieces. To me, No Country for Old Men was a masterpiece, A Man Escaped is a masterpiece, Autumn Sonata, Ace in the Hole, The Dead, Fargo, so many others, but alas, not this one. I guess I'm not deep enough.

bandw All of the trademarks of an Antonioni film are here: slow pacing, artful framing, interesting architectural backgrounds, painterly use of color, pretty women, non-linear time sequencing, and a minimal score. What is missing is the obscurity seen in previous Antonioni films such as "Eclipse" and "Red Desert." The clarity of presentation takes the film out of the category of "art film" to one that has potential appeal for more general audiences.The story is seemingly simple, but delves deeply into one man's psyche. That man is David Locke (Jack Nicholson), a war correspondent on assignment in Africa trying to report on an rebel insurgency. After being stymied in every attempt to contact the rebels, and with his Jeep stuck in the desert sands, Locke falls to the ground in despair saying "All right, I don't care." That incident, together with Locke's failing marriage, provide motivation for his seizing an opportunity to leave all behind and start over using the identity of another David (Robertson) who has died in an adjoining hotel room. This other David looks enough like Locke/Nicholson so that the identity exchange, even the substitution of passport photos, is believable. The theme of wanting to start over again is appealing--who hasn't had that desire at some point in life? Initially swapping identities infuses Locke with renewed interest in life, but ultimately he finds that he cannot shed his old self, at one point saying "The old David is hungry." Locke's relating the story of the blind man regaining his sight is wonderfully done, perfectly summarizing his own life. There are subtle observations, like Locke's wife saying that she had more interest in her husband after being informed of his death than she did when he was with her.Antonioni keeps a lid on Nicholson to great effect, he slows his speech and walk to where we respond to Nicholson as Locke rather than as Jack Nicholson. Along the way Locke takes up with a woman (Maria Schneider) whose name is never given. I found Schneider's performance here engaging, much different from her fine performance as Jeanne in "Last Tango in Paris." Outside of sharing Schneider, "The Passenger" has essential similarities to Last Tango. Both are stories of men trying to resolve an existential crisis--one man through anonymous sex, as in Last Tango, and the other through a new identity here. The emotional tone of the two movies is also remarkably similar.The DVD comes with two commentary tracks recorded in 2005. I found the commentary done by Nicholson to be the more interesting. This doesn't seem like something that Nicholson would do. I think I learned as much about Nicholson from his commentary as I did about the film--he is more serious about his acting and film in general than I have given him credit for.I found this film well worth two viewings. I think it would be hard for anyone not to watch the iconic final scenes more than once.