A majestic plunge into a primate state of human existence. The sound effects, the cinematography, Monica Vitti - everything comes together beautifully, and is resolved in a distressing fashion. And yes, Monica Vitti is the most beautiful woman to be captured on film.

(Blu-ray rewatch)

Vitti's character arc is very distressing. It's true that the other characters are all bland ciphers, but I feel that, mixed with the tone and mood, it really works. Also, I expected a huge outburst of colour, and instead was treated to grimy industrial hues, which was surprisingly enthralling.

Monica Vitti with red-brown hair; mmmmmmmmm! Lucky newspaper.

Strange and unsettling. The cinematography is extraordinary and the locations even more so; a land of steam and fog, lakes of pollution and poison. The setting reminded me of Tarkovsky's Stalker, while the odd modernist interiors and the ambient background noises reminded me of 2001. Vitti is incredible. A lost soul in an alien world. I just wanted to give her a hug.

Every shot has been meticulously planned and thought out, and with wonderful effect. This really is an amazingly beautiful movie. As expected from Antonioni it moves slowly, and the pacing can be politely described as methodical. The highlight of the movie is without doubt Monica Vitti's amazingly fragile performance and her chemistry with Richard Harris. Recommended.

#284

"Thematically, Red Desert is a distillation of Antonioni's preferred themes and imagery: alienation, anxiety, modern life, and industrialized landscapes." - Jaime N. Christley

Fuck off.

deliberately paced, nevertheless awesome

The aesthetics are beautiful and I do feel like there's something more here, but it's not that great.

Honestly, I think this is beautiful and boring, very boring.

358

There's no sense in denying that Antonioni's movies are usually borderline boring. This is a necessary side-effect of a deliberate and normally successful method, of his kind of Zen attitude to narrative, and the slow pace usually pays off and ends up adding to the excitement. The Red Desert is less successful in this sense. It's smart and visually powerful but it's somewhat less compelling than most of his movies. Don't make this your introduction to Antonioni, but fans shouldn't miss this.

Now this is really something. It makes no sense whatsoever, but you always want to keep watching it

# 421

Vitti's performance is riveting. The whole thing is incredibly thoughtful and nuanced, giving you much to absorb and appreciate. The cinematography is the best I've seen in an Antonioni film, with bold color and heaps of haunting images. And the sound design is an unsettling mix of industrial hum and electronic noise. I also found this to be the most emotionally involved of his movies. Beautiful and strange and definitely worth coming back to.

Antonioni films are a divisive area for me. Everything in the film is sound - the long, ennui creating shots, the striking use of colour (as Antonioni's first colour film), and the skittish performance of Vitti. The problem is either my personal preferences, or that it feels a lifeless between moments of great interest. Its designed to generate ennui in the viewer but it should be engaging in a paradoxical way.

310

If only all movies were this beautiful. Meticulous compositions of gray, dead and lifeless urban landscapes come to life through Antonioni's eye for symmetry and asymmetry, balance and the disturbance of said balance. "The Red Desert" is a powerful character study that delves into the uncertain and ambiguous nature of the mind, and is not - as some have noted - at all boring. On the contrary, it daringly refuses to structure its scenes in a simple, causal fashion. Raw (un)natural beauty.

Another beautiful, meditative, and challenging film from Antonioni. What I really like about his stuff is how his sensibilities are so completely unwavering, that as long as I wait until I am in the right mood to appreciate it, the results are always positive.

As Shakespeare once said, "Beauty without substance is like a rose that smells like shit". Very applicable to this little opus. It is undenyably a real looker, however the story is more of the same "bored, slightly disturbed, rich, white people being bored, rich, white and slighly disturbed"-stuff that left me more enthralled with the scenic backgrounds than the actual plot in L'avventura.