Michelangelo Antonioni’s The Passenger is a feast for visually innovative takes on shots and cuts.
As opposed to traditional flashback techniques where the spectator is thrown into a different space and time as marked by a clear cut, here Antonioni gently moves the camera away from Locke, who is in the process of stealing Mr. Robertson’s identity, towards the balcony without any visual interruption. Following this smooth transition is a scene in which Locke is holding conversation with Mr. Robertson. Antonioni has intentionally misled his audience by way of suggesting that the two Lockes share the same spatial and temporal context.
Even though there are no visual hints of this transition in space and time, there is a discrepancy of sound and image when the camera starts to move away from Locke and his desk at around 19 minutes. A conversation has already started, and yet the camera lingers with Locke in the present. Clearly, he is alone in this room. We are led to believe, therefore, that what we hear must be non-diegetic, probably something that is happening in Locke’s mind as he works on the passport. Thus, although the visual elements are logically misleading, viewers would still be able to figure out that the two Lockes do not coexist in the same room. Intriguingly, Antonioni fools us again by showing us a recording device at around 22 minutes, implying that the conversation we hear is, in fact, diegetic. As sound and image gradually realign, we are reintroduced to the time and space in which present Locke lives. The Passenger is not a time-traveling film, but its transitions and subversions of linear visual narrative challenge audience expectations.
Another stylistic characteristic throughout the film is that Antonioni often embeds visual hints to suggest what is happening or about to happen in lieu of unnecessary conversations. For instance, when Locke discovers the corpse of Mr. Robertson at around the 14-minute mark, Locke comes uncomfortably close to Robertson and gazes at his face in a manner that could be described as erotic. The elongated action lasts for almost five seconds, during which it becomes apparent that Locke is already considering identity theft.
Moreover, there are several scenes that explain the motivation of Locke’s identity exchange with Mr. Robertson without any conversational elements: Locke’s desperation when he finds his car stuck in the desert, his disappointment at local indifference, inhospitality—all of which hints at his own struggling career. Also, at around 26 minutes, his wife’s lack of emotion at the news of his supposed death suggests an unhappy marriage.
Even Locke frequently expresses a strong preference for spectacle over dialogue. At the one hour and nine minutes mark, the girl asks Locke what he is escaping from, and instead of answering the question verbally, he beckons the girl to turn her back to the front seat and see for herself. Via tracking shot from a high-velocity car, we see trees lining the road, moving away, and as they leave the city behind, the idea of freeing oneself from the civilized context and leading a freer, more personal life is revealed.
Aside from all the stylistic innovations, there is one specific shot that has always been hotly discussed and admired. The penultimate shot towards the end is probably the largest chunk of speechless expression in the whole film. It is a seven-minute long continuous shot that slowly and quietly push the story to its climax. Compare to the impact the shot produces, the way it is made is much more intriguing. The entire hotel is actually built specifically for the shot. To keep the camera steady, Antonioni used a track in the ceiling of the hotel, and then in the middle of the shot the track ends and passes the camera off to a hook that is hung by a crane. The bars on the window are built on hinges and are opened as the camera goes through. It closes again when the camera turn back toward the hotel in the end of the shot, creating a magical visual effect that makes the spectators see the whole scene through the vision of Locke’s soul as it leaves his body, making its way through the window bars and wonders back towards the end of the shot. It avoids the unnecessary Hollywood style of bloodshed and gunshot, yet revealed Locke’s death in a peaceful way just as the camera moves along peacefully.
Film is an art form where “everything that we read, hear, think, and see” (as stated by Antonioni himself) at a particular moment turns into concrete images, and then the images are shaped into stories. The Passenger is a balancing act between the vagaries of art and narrative clarity, in which the former is realized through contradictions and discrepancies in visual and aural elements and the latter through the film’s laconism, its insistence on pure visual cinema.
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