The Passenger

The two films prior to The Passenger, also set outside the director's native country, but now obviously dated, tried using specific individual cultural settings (America and England) to highlight the emptiness of human behavior in the face of shallow cultural values. The Passenger is a decidedly more timeless film because instead of focusing on a specific culture, it wisely focuses on an individual, a globe-trotting reporter, whose own focus is on war and revolution in third world nations.

David Locke begins to grow weary of his life that constantly exposes him to the negative forces between and within nations all too common in today's world (another reason this film is still tremendously fresh and powerful today). When another man with a similar appearance suddenly dies in a small remote African village hotel Locke himself is staying in, he assumes the other man's (Robertson's) identity and follows an international trail to keep the appointments in Robertson's little black book. This takes him from Africa to Germany to Spain.

Without giving too much away here, it becomes all too clear that Locke--now Robertson--wants to escape himself. Antonioni, in collaboration with brilliant scripter Mark Peploe, moves us with Locke/Robertson from place to place as he blindly follows his nose, or, more accurately, runs from other noses following him--one of which is his own. Another of them belongs to his wife who begins to believe her husband is still alive somewhere. Still others are those of the police. But the most dangerous noses are those of some of the same people Locke, while a reporter, passively interviewed. Now, as Robertson, his role is not so passive anymore.

In his haste to escape, Locke finds that Robertson was involved in a dangerous business that could result in the ultimate escape. This is a great film that fuses thriller elements with drama that penetrates because we see and understand what Locke thinks and does. Jack Nicholson's portrait of the escapee is right on the money; he sounds, at least half the time, as though he's not really sure that what he's saying is true, or that he can believe it--exactly what someone running from himself would sound like.

Antonioni emphasizes the isolation of people from each other in interesting visual ways. He often shoots scenes with the camera at a noticeable distance from the actors; we are physically removed from the action, and with this distance, there is the distinct feeling of what we see as observers being not really action, but a kind of indistinct or unclear version of action. As well, the camera intermittently closes up on Locke when he is doing nothing, or waiting, or is stuck in a rut (literally, in a sand rut when his vehicle is snagged in the African desert). These close-ups are a very effective counerpart to the distance shots; the first removes us from what could possibly be critical action, and the second hits us in the face with the opposite.

A real shame this is not on DVD. As of this writing (October 2003), the only DVD version is a Japanese Region 2 NTSC disc, very hard to find.