The Passenger

by Ari

Michelangelo Antonioni’s (L'Avventura, La Notte) hardly seen thriller, The Passenger, is available on dvd, an obvious must have for anyone interested in his work. For those not familiar with Antonioni’s films, The Passenger is a perfect introduction to one of the greatest filmmakers in the history of cinema. This is easily his most accessible film, yet contains everything synonymous with Antonioni’s name.

The Passenger is another fascinating journey into loneliness, emptiness, solitude, and desertion, themes Antonioni examines in all of his films. What strikes me most about Antonioni’s craft is his ability to convey raw emotion, plot, and thematic content through his arresting imagery. Experiencing Antonioni’s work is to be overwhelmed by a visual elegance of a true master filmmaker. His imagery is entrancing, dangerous, sharp, beautiful. As the opening credits appear on-screen, a series of African landscapes and vista’s grace the screen with a startling immediacy. You are there, enveloped by the world Antonioni captures with his camera.

David Locke (Jack Nicholson) is a journalist reporting on guerilla warfare in Africa, alone, frustrated, and emotionally lost. We have no idea who he is or what he’s searching for, only an introduction to a conflicted man aimlessly looking for something tangible in his life. A freak accident presents him the opportunity to do something extreme. In the hotel room across from his, David finds the dead body of a man he knew briefly, and for some inexplicable reason he steals his identity to begin a new life. His choice is initially confounding, but Antonioni clearly explains the character’s psyche and existential crisis by the conclusion. Because of some burning, uncontrollable internal struggle, David decides to steal this man’s life and leave everything behind on a whim, including his success and marriage. As he embarks on his journey, everything changes. The man he becomes, Robertson, has a scrap book with strange meetings scattered around the globe. David uses the opportunity to travel to as many places as possible, only to realize that Robertson is an arms-dealer who sells weapons to the very guerrillas he was trying to document.

He’s elated by the experience. He travels farther and farther away from who he was and meets a wonderful girl (Maria Schnieder) along the way. His wife wonders about his death, comes across information about Robertson, and attempts to seek him out, while agents closely follow his whereabouts. The screenplay is lean and focused. There’s hardly any exposition. What the characters say and do is motivated by their reaction to their environments and situations. Subtlety is what makes this movie work. It’s apparent in everything from pacing to performance.

Jack Nicholson is tremendous. He’s in just about every sequence of the film, and his lost, aggravated sensibilities are fascinating to watch. His chemistry with the lovely Maria Schnieder is beautiful. David is so insecure about himself that he genuinely doesn’t understand that she’s exactly the same. He responds to moments of similar interests and feelings, loves her presence and freedom, but is missing something profound within himself. The Passenger is about a man searching for purpose and meaning, and realizing that life is more complex than receiving grand epiphanies about human existence. No matter how hard he tries, he can’t escape his past. No matter how many new places he visits, they’re only minor distractions. His character is detached and distant from normality.

The pace is deliberately slow in order to carefully develop the story and characters, but the imagery and performances maintain interest. Everything builds to an astonishing conclusion, beautifully captured in a single prolonged take - one of the most humbling pieces of filmmaking I’ve seen. The Passenger is an exquisite film, arguably Antonioni’s most entertaining and enjoyable.