Today is an important day for me. I didn't know it would be at first, I mean how can you know when a day will become one of the most important in your development in any way? It was a normal day, I did my shopping, I scrolled through various social media apps, I listened to music but that was about to change. What makes this day so important to me is that this was the day that I was introduced to Michelangelo Antonioni and his masterpiece, L’Avventura.

There are certain landmarks in the development of my film taste. It changed after I watched films like The Blues Brothers and The Breakfast Club at 13 years old. It changed when I was introduced to David Lynch through Eraserhead and most importantly Blue Velvet. Then this year has gone on to accelerate that progression, Ozu, Tarkvosky, von Stroheim and now Antonioni. Apologies for the dramatic tone, but I genuinely don't feel the same anymore. My thoughts on cinema as an art has shifted, my worldview has been shifted and my thoughts on my own ideas of what I want my own films to be has changed quite significantly. I don't think a film has inspired me this intensely since Citizen Kane or maybe even Blue Velvet. Again I apologise for the dramatic tone, but I really needed to get this out of my system because if I didn't my friends would never hear the end of me talking about this masterpiece (they'll probably still have to put up with me rambling about it, just in less detail).

Normally, I don't go into films with high expectations. But on this occasion, I just couldn't help myself. Where I normally tell myself to start off thinking that every film is going to be average, L’Avventura was something that I expected to be amazed by. Now I know that's risky going into a film with expectations that high, but I could feel that there was something different about this film and I was absolutely spot on. You can see so much of this film's influence everywhere over the whole of arthouse cinema. There aren't many others that have a similar size footprint. Once the plot properly kicked in I was hooked, spellbound until the end.

What is it with some of the greatest films of all time not being understood upon their initial release? I've read about the film's poor reception at Cannes and though it confuses me, it also doesn't surprise me. There can't have been many films beforehand like this, I certainly haven't seen any so far, with such an intense and strange atmosphere. I'm not sure what was up with me at the start, but I just couldn't focus on the dialogue. I had to keep putting the video back a few seconds to catch all the dialogue in order for me to process everything that was being said. Fortunately the set up isn't too long, and we get to the boat pretty quickly in comparison to the rest of the film's pace. Antonioni introduces all of these characters so quietly, revealing some of their traits through dialogue but mostly through body language and facial expressions. It is so subtle how this film's magic works its spell that I had to spend a few hours contemplating how on earth I was left speechless by the end of the whole ordeal. No other film has made me feel so afraid of the water like L’Avventura did. For the first section of the story the waves are so overwhelming in their repetitions, seeing the main group of characters jump into these waters so carefree definitely made me nervous.

By this point I was thinking that this is a pretty good film, it's very interesting how cold the long takes feel and I was interested to see how this group of people were going to grow or change throughout the narrative. There is enough development to give the audience a strong enough idea of how everyone relates to one another but there's enough tension and unanswered questions to make sure that the film still has its upper hand. Looking back on this after finishing, I realise that every shot and every cut is so terrifically precise and potent that it becomes so hypnotic in drawing you into this world and onto that boat.

At this point, I feel that discussing Anna is important. She comes across as so apathetic to the point that it becomes intriguingly ambiguous. Except from being unhappy with her fiancé and that she feels unsatisfied with her own life. She deliberately falsely claims that a shark is in the water where she is swimming, only to never elaborate why she chose to do this. My interpretation was that she wanted to scare people because she feels so meaningless no matter if she is on holiday or not. Her unrest continues to grow yet everyone else seems to ignore these red flags. Anna's short appearance in the overall runtime I feel is key to what the film is really about, but I'll try and save that for a later point in this review.

So at this point when we get to the famous disappearance, my jaw dropped. I think that literally every other film that I've seen with this kind of premise would make a massive spectacle out of the inciting incident. Antonioni goes the other way and underplays this so drastically that all that indicates the change is a simple cut, the most simple trick in the book to convince us of the new reality. What makes this underplaying of the crucial event work so well for the film, is that no one instantly reacts to the true weight that this moment brings to the film. It's only after they have slept for a night and people can still not find Anna that the existential dread transfers from the film's atmosphere to the characters themselves. There is this strange juxtaposition with beautiful compositions and cold, baron landscapes. I'll also save this for a later paragraph.

From this point onwards is where L’Avventura goes awry from anything which you may expect from traditional narrative form. It sheds its original tight plot for something very unique to this film in particular. That is, incredibly controlled aimlessness. I don't really know what that means even though I literally just typed it, but it best reflects how the latter half of this film feels to me. There is so much artistic direction in terms of where people go and what happens to them, but instead of being stuck to a single location people drift from place to place doing different things that feels aimless yet meticulous in how it is presented to us. I don't think that there is a single wasted moment in the whole runtime even after the bait and switch is executed so well.

But what does all of this mean, you may ask? Well I currently haven't read any other interpretations on the film so I apologise in advance if my analysis seems superficial but it is what came to mind as soon as I saw the ending. I think that looking at the title of the trilogy in which this is the first instalment to is important in interpreting the message. It is referred to as the "trilogy on modernity and its discontents" and this is what was most apparent to me, that it is about the shortcomings of modern life and how the ideals that have led us to this point in life have had their shortcomings, with us now having to grapple what the collapse of these ideals means for us as a culture and as individuals. This is where Anna's disappearance becomes a crucial part to breaking down the intent. In my opinion, I see Anna as being the first one to come to recognise the failures of modernity and how her expectations for marriage have collapsed before she has even properly been wedded. She understands that by conforming and adopting the hegemonic values of her time, she will inevitably be left feeling incomplete and empty. No true love awaits her and she knows this. By the time we get to the island where Anna and Sandro have their little argument, this serves as the final nail in the coffin. Anna can no longer live this way, so I think that she just straight up leaves. But keeping in line with a more metaphorical reading, I think that she disappears from L'Avventura because she is no longer limited to societal codes like the rest of the cast is. After all, it is her vanishing that brings Sandro and Claudia to these same revelations at the end of the film.

Another crucial point to understanding Antonioni's exploration of moral degradation is how the modern world has resulted in the lack of communication between us becoming sadly commonplace. For the entire time, nobody fully understands another person in this film. This is best portrayed by the visual compositions of having one person facing towards the camera and another having their back to us facing the opposite way to the person they are engaging in conversation. People talk to one another but for most of the runtime they literally do not see the same thing. The tone of most of these shots rely on dissonance between the people and I respect Antonioni and Aldo Scavarda relied on these heavy visuals to express what these characters are thinking far beyond words are able to do so. People are unable to express themselves to one another, their communication stunted in some ways. This part of the film's message clicked with me when Claudia and Sandro ring the bells and someone responds to them. To me, this seems to be a representation of language exposing its limitations to how we communicate. I think that it is in this bell scene that Claudia expresses the most positive emotions in the entire film, so it would make sense that this moment is of thematic significance. The communication issues seem to be at the start of being resolved towards the end of the film. Sandro and Claudia finally face the same way as each other, even if they aren't looking at each other and Claudia places her hand on his head. Though this seems to be enigmatic, I interpret this moment as being the start to a new period. To what exactly, I may have to watch this a few more times to get clarity on, but it is a start that is being made. No more need for empty statements and old institutions, we must start by engaging with one another like humans with emotions and thoughts and feelings. What Anna realised in the first half an hour or so takes Claudia (and maybe Sandro) another 2 hours to realise after hurting each other in a variety of ways.

L’Avventura's story is enhanced through this brilliant cinematography that I just can't even begin to dissect its full power in this review. As I mentioned in the paragraph above, the compositions enhance the themes of isolation and miscommunication. But the visuals also show how cold the world has become. There's no need for intimate close ups except from a few notable scenes. Antonioni is clearly much more interested in expressing these empty spaces where no one really knows what to make of the modern world and how void anything we have made has ended up becoming. During the search and rescue period, the visuals brilliantly capture the isolation present between each of the characters through the ever present oceans and how far away everyone is from each other. There is so much to focus on in these frames that there were points that I had to actively remind myself that there were subtitles that I had to read to make sure that I was keeping up with the plot. The way that this camera moves is fantastic, it is so slow but always doing enough to change the way that people are positioned in a shot. L’Avventura is filled with some of the best long takes in any film that I've seen, rivalling the likes of Welles and Tarkovsky in my books. I wonder how bold these visuals must've been for the start of the 60s, because they managed to deeply move me all these years later better than most people who have come later and made long takes part of their visual repertoire.

This is probably one of the longest reviews that I've written on this website so far, and it still feels like that I'm only scratching the surface of this piece of artistic genius. Few films are this perfect, this provocative from every angle I can look at it from. I'm looking forward to watching more from Antonioni and in all honesty, it doesn't bother me if none of his other features top this one. This is certainly a tough old beast to better, and if he made one better it could be a strong contender for my favourite film period. Films like L’Avventura make me feel blessed and spoiled that they are actually able to exist. This is a new adventure in filmmaking alright. One that has inspired me and it will be living in my head rent free for the next couple of weeks for sure. I am left feeling overwhelmed, befuddled and mesmerised hours later still. A film made by a wizard, an alien that crashed on this planet, an old soul who had wisdom beyond his years, all of the above.

I've said too much and too little about this masterpiece, so I think that I should end things here. How can anything else compare? Give me a couple of weeks to get over this, one of the GOATS no questions about it.