Blow-Up (1966)

Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1966’s movie Blow-Up follows a journey of an artist. It is about a fashion photographer who, upon casually taking photographs in one of London’s parks, notices something suspicious in his works. Once he blows up the images, he sees something that resembles a murder and becomes obsessed with uncovering the truth about the incident. By the end, he loses the sense of time and space — as he goes to one of the partis, he sees one of the models he photographed and asks why she was still in London when she was supposed to go to Paris, to which she responds that she is actually in Paris. He goes back to the park to see if the body is still there and notices that it’s gone. In the last scene, he sees people playing mimed tennis and throws them the imaginary ball. He then disappears, and only grass is visible.

Just as The Plea, Blow-Up can also be open to interpretation. The movie is shot only from the main character's perspective, and the spectators can join him in his artistic process. However, the way I see it, this movie is not about the murder but the photographer's passion for his craft. We can see the intimacy the main character has with his work, the way he necks the model while taking her pictures, and the way he obsesses about blowing up his images to find out what is shown on them.

There have been many analyses made about this movie, but it is clear that there is no conventional understanding of it. Blow-Up essentially does not have a narrative thread, and it makes no clear point. However, I find it essential that the movie succeeds in showing how enchanting and subjective the artistic process truly is. The main character goes on a personal quest to discover what went wrong in the park, but he cannot share this issue with anyone else. We can also see that no one except the main character seems to be bothered with what seems to be the murder. The ending made me question whether the murder actually took place as it could have been part of the main character’s imagination.

I watched Blow-Up as my assignment for the Art History class that I was taking during my gap year. I was initially intrigued by the plot because I am generally very interested in photography myself, but what I saw was much more than just photography. I was able to see how intimidating and challenging the work of an artist can be. The journey that each one of them goes through cannot be adequately described to anyone. Each artist has to go through a personal journey, and grasping its importance is very difficult. Blow-Up, on the other hand, manages to achieve this goal. Overall, I cannot say that I learned a lesson from this movie. However, it still left a significant mark on me because it made me feel and become part of the main character’s experience.