Antonioni’s treatment of 60s Swinging London is practically anthropological. And that’s the way I feel Blow-Up must be watched.Deeper meanings can certainly be gleaned (the futility of life, how much of what we do is meaningless, the inevitability of failure), but the first 30 minutes are essentially a plotless look at an uncaring, bastard photographer who has zero interest in anything and hides behind his camera and his ability to dominate everyone and everything around him. The best part, by far, is the mid-section. If I pitched the basic idea of this movie “Photographer accidentally uncovers a murder,” you’d probably think “yeah, that sounds like a good movie.” And you’d be right, except for the fact that the plot doesn’t particularly interest Antonioni, but rather how the photographer (David Hemmings, in a career-making role) reacts to this freak occurrence and whether he can muster up the courage (and honestly, the interest) in uncovering this mystery.
The nearly dialogue-free sequence where Hemmings is examining and processing his pictures is hypnotic and prove that Antonioni knows exactly what he’s doing. It’s not for everyone and in the end, it probably means nothing. Then again, maybe not…
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