Michelangelo Antonioni

‘Our responses to the world are, by their very nature, complex and contradictory. Yet we generally expect fictional narratives to organize these responses and provide us with extractable ‘messages’, denying contradictions, simplifying complexities, rejecting (or at least coherently positioning) ambiguity. Such expectations will get us nowhere with Antonioni, whose films are as inexhaustible as reality itself. Which is precisely why – the supreme irony – so many viewers perceive his work as unusually empty, mistaking specifics for generalizations, humanism for misanthropy, depth for shallowness, presence for absence, optimism for pessimism.’
Brad Stevens over de Italiaanse regisseur Antonioni (1912-2007)