Blow-Up - a short essay

Michelangelo Antonioni, 1966



What is reality? Is it what we can see? Is it what everyone agrees to? Is there even such a thing as a universal reality? There are all eternal questions, and ever since we began to have the time to think about these things, there has always been question as to the nature of what ‘reality’ is, or if it even exists. Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni’s first English film sets out to explore this complex subject with Blow-Up, a deceptively simple film that turns out to be a brilliantly visual, complex venture into the very notion of what ‘reality’ means.

The plot is simple enough, even sounding possibly boring. Yet there is enough intrigue in it to initially attract you to the film. It’s basically just about a hot shot photographer who takes pictures of a couple in a park, only to find that he may have accidently taken a picture of a murder in progress when he looks closer. The actual film is very linear, simply following the photographer through his simple journey, but beneath everything he does and everything encounters is a well hidden but startling undertone of the bizarre. The film opens with a group of mimes in the back of a truck riding through London, yelling and screaming. Huh? The photographer (never named in the film) takes photographs of a model who is sensually writhing her body while on the ground, and he climbs on top of her in a sort of mock sex scene, but nothing actually happens. Uh..? The photographer then goes to an antique shop, and is suddenly struck with an incredible urge to buy an... airplane propeller. As soon as he buys it he completely forgets about it, until it is delivered and he just throws it on the ground in his studio, forgetting about it, like a child who suddenly has to have that one toy, only to forget about it a minute later.

What does all this mean? Well I’m not sure that anyone really knows what it all means. It is open to interpretation. The thing about Blow-Up is that it is presented in a way that you can watch the entire movie and think you understand it without ever having to question very much about the movie. To a lot of people, I`m sure Blow-Up is a straight up murder mystery and don`t even stop to think that there is more to it. And the thing is, they aren`t wrong! Blow-Up is about the nature of reality, so it only makes sense that the reality of Blow-Up be radically different for different viewers.

But for me it seems the main theme is defiantly reality, and what better way to explore this with a picture. A picture is definite, an unblinking eye that you can`t argue with. You take a picture, and that picture is a snapshot of reality. Right? Maybe not, as Antonioni explores. The photographer takes a picture of a couple in a park, but notices something strange. One of the figures is looking towards a bush. The photographer thinks he sees something in the bush and `blows up` the picture (makes a section of it bigger) to get a better look. Oh my, is that a face hiding in the bushes? The photographer begins to look closer and closer at the photo and blows it up more and more, until he is convinced that he has uncovered a murder plot. Eventually, he thinks he sees a body obscured by a bush, and goes out to the park at night to see for himself...surely enough, there is a body! At this point the photographer tries to convince people to come see the murdered person he found, but is able to convince no one to come with him. When he goes back in the morning, the body has vanished without a trace.



So was there actually a murder plot? As humans, we have been conditions to see what we believe, but maybe seeing isn`t necessarily believing. Antonioni brilliantly demonstrates this with the entire blow up process which we become drawn into. Just like the photographer, we become convinced that there is a murder conspiracy from the photos. But if you look back at them, it`s rather foolish. That face we thought we saw in the bushes? Is it really a face, or is it just a blob of shadow and pixels? But because we want to believe something, our brains begin to trick us and we begin to actually see things that are not really there. And the more the photographer blows up the picture, the grainier it gets. The more he blows it up, the less clear the situation becomes until it reaches a point where we are just seeing blobs of white. But while you are watching the movie, you are convinced that those really are bodies, faces and guns! As I said, Antonioni was simply a genius for being able to draw us in like he did. As an audience, we become just as convinced of the murder plot as the photographer, and are just as sure that we see figures in the blown up pictures, when really they look more like blotches of white and black, which get progressively worse as the photographer blows up the picture again and again. But since we become more and more intrigued, we begin to accept and see things that our minds want to see. And then these theories become realities.

As mentioned before, the photographer goes to the park to see with his own eyes the body that he believes he found in the picture, and he finds it. But of course, the next day it has vanished without a trace. The grass doesn`t even seem to have been disturbed. Now why is it gone when we know we saw it!? Now the plot thickens, and begins to get scary. As an audience we begin to wonder if it`s possible that we didn`t see anything at all in the blown up photographs. Have we, like the photographer, been duped by them? And more over, did we actually see a body in that park? Now Antonioni is really getting heavy. Maybe it is possible for realities to exist within one another. Now we are getting existential and metaphysical, and at this point in the movie I`m loving it.

What the director is saying is basically that it is possible that simply from truly believing we see something that it becomes a reality in our world. The photographer and the audience both were convinced they saw a body in the photographs, and upon investigation, sure enough, one showed up! But is that only because we all convinced ourselves that there was one, thus creating one? As soon as the photographer fails to convince anyone that there is a body, as no one believes or cares enough to check it out, and since the photographs mysterious went missing in his studio, the body ceases to exist as it is no longer a private reality. As soon as the photographer tried to involve other people who hadn`t been tricked by the photographs into thinking and thus believing they saw something, the body stopped existing as there was now plausible grounds for it never having existed in the first place.

This is all just such fascinating stuff. Through the course of a simple story, the director manages to show us that reality can be both created and destroyed. It is not a fix entity, seen by everyone. Blow-Up­ is trying to make us realize that just because we see something doesn`t make it real. When the photographer is isolated, he is the only one who believes in the reality of a murder. He believes that because he can see it in a photograph – even though what he sees is just blobs – that it must be real. And when he goes to see it himself, he sure enough finds a body. He has created his own reality. First the reality is from the third person point of view of a picture, and then it is from a first person point of view when he sees it for himself. But Blow-Up shows us that just because we see something, doesn`t make it real, as in the end, the body simply vanishes, as if it never were there in the first place!



If you want to get even deeper, you could say that maybe the body really was real. There are quite a few instances in the film that suggest simply believing something is enough to make it a personal reality. The photographerer personally believes he saw a body, and then he actually saw one. Is it possible that maybe the body was real, from his point of view, only disappearing when he tried to involve outsiders not part of his separate reality? I think it is a possibility. An excellent example of this would be the brilliant ending; the photographer finds himself watching a group of mimes play a game of tennis, except they are not using an actual ball or rackets, they are simply pretending they have them, being the good mimes they are. But as the mimes play and others watch, the photographer becomes involved.

Soon it seems as if they are actually playing tennis, and everyone is following the ball through the air as if they could actually see it. Eventually, the photographer begins to hear the sounds of the ball hitting the racket, even though there isn’t a ball or racket at all. When the ball lands near the photographer, he purposely runs towards it and picks it up, carefully aiming and then throwing the invisible ball back into the game. Now we didn’t see a ball or racket, yet we began to hear it and everyone was interacting as if there was actually a game going on...is this because everyone watching that game believed they were watching the real thing, thus making it a reality? It begins fake enough, but eventually Antonioni actually involves us in it, and you don’t even notice yourself hearing the racket and ball. It just becomes real because we begin to believe that it is, and so does everyone else around the game. Seeing isn’t believing, simply believing is believing, and believing becomes reality.

But I could go on and on and on about the various ways Antonioni tackles the subject or reality, as well as many other sub concepts and even entirely separate ones, but I just decided to focus on those few main points. I simply find Blow –Up fascinating to no end, and could analyze it till kingdom come. Some things I didn’t mention, however, are the fantastic visuals and the performances. Visually, the film is a masterpiece, and if you know anything about photography you’ll love the visual in this. Instead of focusing on classic cinematography, Antonioni sets up all his shots much more like photographs, brilliantly taking advantage of colour, contrast and negative space. Since the film is about a photographer, this fits extremely well, and the end result is an amazing looking film, to go with everything else. David Hemmings should be commended for his great performance as the photographer, in which he depicts both a smooth, suave hot shot as well as a cruel, domineering woman hater, something I didn’t even touch base on but is still a major part of the film. The performances from the various sub characters who popup and disappear as soon as they’ve arrived also did universally great jobs with their characters. Blow-Up truly was a pool of talent.

Special mention also goes to the blow up sequence itself. With an almost total lack of music and dialogue, the sequence builds and maintains an incredible sense of tension and suspense with a beautiful flow and intensity to it. It gets you just as involved in the process as the photographer, and thus allows you to become as infatuated with the hints and clues he begins to find as he blows up the picture multiple times. Its a masterfully done sequence in a masterfully done film.

But what else can I say about Blow-Up without simply writing a book? There is just so much complexity and layers to it that you could watch it with someone and end up having completely different interruptions about what happened, or even if anything happened at all, as the last shot subtly hints. The first time I watched it I liked it, and saw it simply as a sort of murder mystery, yet the second time I saw it I basically watched a different movie. And when I watch it again I’m sure I’ll see entirely different angles. The philosophy behind it simply is fascinating to no end, and the execution is one of the most expertly done things I’ve seen in film. Without recapping my theories about illusion vs. reality, Ill simply leave it at that and add that the film also looks stunning, is deftly edited and features grade a performances all around. Blow-Up is ultimately not just a masterpiece; it is perhaps one of the best films I’ve ever seen, and look intently forward to seeing it many times again.