The Passenger (USA, 1975)
Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni
Starring Jack Nicholson, Maria Schneider, Jenny Runacre, Ian Hendry

There is an argument put forward by film theorists that today's audiences are incapable of appreciating older films. The saturation of our culture with music videos and the internet creates a natural impatience, which carries over into cinema through increasingly rapid editing and flashier cinematography. This causes the simplification of imagery and the symbols which lie behind them, and the whole process begins feeding on itself until we are all infantilised.Notwithstanding its inherent arrogance towards the cinema-going public, this theory is flawed because it is based upon a nostalgic assumption about older films. Contrary to its assumptions, potentially great films are often reduced to being merely good or very good, not by shortcomings in their audience but in the difficult attitude they take towards presenting their ideas. The Passenger is a typical example, being a revered classic which is indeed very good, but whose flaws are easy to acknowledge and prevent it from ever being great.The Passenger is Michelangelo Antonioni's third and final feature in the English language, the others being Blow-Up and Zabriskie Point. Like many of his films, it explores the issue of alienation, specifically of characters feeling isolated and out of place in the world around them. But where Zabriskie Point attempts this analysis with an entire generation, embodied by the two students who make love in the desert, The Passenger is a lot more focussed, more personal and ultimately more successful.The film explores the extent to which a single act or idea can alter an individual's life, using the trading of identities as a means to explore existential disillusionment. When we first meet David Locke, expertly played by Jack Nicholson, he is bored of his life, bored of his work and desperate to escape to somewhere where no-one can find him. He trades identities with the dead man in the next room believing that he can start his life over, without any baggage or responsibilities: for once he can live the way he wants, for as long as he wants.

Having taken on this mantle, and changed from Locke to Robertson, our leading man quickly finds himself in dangerous circumstances worthy of any thriller. The scene in the church, in which Nicholson bluffs his way through a meeting with the men he is supplying with arms, is reminiscent of Richard Hannay during the political meeting in The 39 Steps. Both characters have to think on their feet to convince the world that they are someone else, making all decisions and giving all answers based purely on impulse and guesswork.But unlike John Buchan's novel, or any of the film versions that followed, the thrills in The Passenger are much more internalised. There is a thriller-like plot, both in Locke's new identity as a gun runner and in the efforts of his director and wife to track him down. But these elements have to take equal billing to the existential thrust of the film, which is interested in identity and the internalised conflicts of the central character. The film manages to balance the two very well, giving us enough moments of jeopardy and near-misses to keep the less patient among us interested.The central idea of The Passenger is that all men (and possibly women) are bound by the same doubts, fears and anxieties. Assuming a new identity is not a feasible means to escape from oneself, no matter how methodically one goes about it. On the one hand, 'Robertson' finds himself bound to supply guns which he cannot possibly deliver; the second he takes the down-payment in the church, he becomes a wanted man. On the other hand, elements of Locke in his previous life begin to encroach, as his initial enthusiasm begins to give way to melancholy, cynicism, and finally an all-encompassing sense of futility.

The key scene in The Passenger comes in the last ten minutes, where Locke and The Girl are in hiding in a hotel, knowing full well that the former will soon be killed. Locke relates a story of a blind man who regains his sight: the man was initially elated, but this vision exposed him to the horrors of the world which he could previously only imagine, and he ended up a recluse who committed suicide. This is the nub of the film: what seems like a chance to escape the world and see it with new eyes only leads to greater suffering. Ultimately all we can do is accept our status as passengers, unable to influence the mechanics of this world and fully mindful that whatever we do, death will always catch up with us.This outlook is furthered by Antonioni's direction, which highlights how small and helpless the characters are. Whether they are crawling through the desert or in the busy streets of an inner city, the central characters are presented from a distance, insignificant in the face of all around them. Even in its most romantic moment, when it appears that Locke and the girl have made love, the camera keeps its distance, peering through the doorway when other directors would have taken us up close and personal. The film is beautifully shot with washed-out colours and a series of interesting camera angle.The most famous of these is the penultimate scene, a seven-minute tracking shot which is both a technical showcase (predating the Steadicam) and a poetic means to bring the story to a close. As Locke lights up a cigarette and lies down on the bed, the camera moves slowly forward through the bars of the window, out into the square, follows the movements of several characters before turning around and drifting back in to find Locke dead. This is Locke's soul taking flight, finally escaping from this world into something new, and taking one last look at what he is leaving behind.

For all its virtues, The Passenger is not without its faults. Even to those familiar with Antonioni's style, or more general trends in European filmmaking, the film is very, very slow and around half an hour too long. Because the emphasis is so much on emotion rather than plot, its story could have been handled in 90 minutes without losing any impact, whether visually or emotionally. Antonioni's languorous shooting style with long slow takes and almost no soundtrack can seem pretentious on occasion, albeit not so much that we lose all interest in what is happening.
The other problem with The Passenger is the sense of distance involved. Just as, in the words of David Lynch, the artist needn't suffer to show suffering, so the audience shouldn't necessary be alienated during a film about alienation. Like the work of Tom Kalin, The Passenger keeps its audience at arms' length, not out of coyness about its subject matter, but because that seems the natural way to tell the story. And as with Swoon or Savage Grace, this decision may be the right one, but it makes connecting with the characters more difficult, putting the entire story in jeopardy.The Passenger is an intriguing and haunting work whose influence on modern cinema continues, as seen by its substantial presence in Anton Corbijn's The American. Jack Nicholson is on good form, albeit not quite as good as in Chinatown, and the film is recommended viewing for anyone interested in European cinema. For all its faults and bits that drag, there is a slow-burning profundity to it, which keeps it an enticing and memorable experience for generations to come.

Rating: 4/5
Verdict: A haunting and intriguing slow-burner

The Arbor (UK, 2010)
Directed by Clio Bernard
Starring Christine Bottomley, Manjinder Virk, Robert Emms, George Costigan

In an age where demographics and target audiences are everything, The Arbor is a film which genuinely defies genre. Nestling somewhere between a documentary and an art film, between a Crimewatch re-enactment and the work of Mike Leigh, it is extremely difficult to pigeonhole it or to compare it readily with any film on a similar subject. Taken on its own terms, it is a tough and often harrowing portrayal of Bradford and its inhabitants in a particular time and place, and while not perfect, it contains much which will intrigue and stimulate.The Arbor is a biopic of the late Bradford playwright Andrea Dunbar, a single mother with three children by three different partners. Her first play, The Arbor, was premiered in London when she was 18 years old. This and her later works - Rita, Sue and Bob Too and Sheila - looked candidly at life on Bradford estates, dealing with subjects like teenage pregnancy, drug addiction and extra-marital affairs. After Rita, Sue and Bob Too was adapted into a film, Dunbar's output declined and she became known as a heavy drinker. She died of a cerebral haemorrhage in 1990, aged just 29.

While such a story contains enough drama and struggle for any run-of-the-mill biopic, there is very little about The Arbor that could be called run-of-the-mill. The film mixes documentary footage of Dunbar and her family, sections of The Arbor staged in the open air, and footage of actors playing members of her family. The gimmick (if that's not too churlish a term) is that the actors are lip-syncing to audio clips of the actual individuals; when their lips move, the real-life people are speaking.
There have been other projects which have used people lip-syncing to recordings in various ways. Think of the Creature Comforts shorts by Aardman, where the voices of the British public are synced up to animations of different animals. Or, to some extent, the fantasy sequences in The Singing Detective, in which Michael Gambon reminisces (or fantasises) about singing old jazz standards in a club. But these comparisons are quite fleeting and don't begin to describe what effect this device has.

It would be tempting to describe it as a Brechtian device, something which is designed to alienate an audience, causing them to realise the artifice of what they are seeing. But that isn't really true either, since the predominant effect is not alienation. The lip-syncing may seem odd at first, but it's done in such a technically proficient manner that you very rarely find yourself distracted by it. Even when the actors' sequences are intercut with footage of Dunbar's real-life children and parents, you don't find yourselves struggling to identify with whatever or whoever is on screen.The Arbor has two central themes, both of which are brought out in a fascinating and original way by this device. The first is an examination of the truth as something which is clouded and fragmented - we have one figure, with multiple stories surrounding her and different viewpoints on the events that befell her. There is a Rashamon-like disagreement among the characters as to what Dunbar did and what she was like, and like Rashamon it is up to us to decide who is telling the truth. Lorraine, her second child, hates her mother and can't forgive her for what she did, while her first-born Lisa won't hear a word against her.

By having actors lip-sync to actual recordings of actual dialogue, we are presented with a series of convincing but conflicting accounts about an individual we know very little about. If it was just the actors speaking, it would be relatively easy to discover the author's inherent bias, and find out where the blame lay, at least in the mind of the filmmakers. Under these circumstances, we have no such luxury and there is no clear right or wrong. Late in the film, there is a staged reading from A State Affair, a play about Andrea Dunbar lifted entirely from the words of Bradford residents who knew her. We hear the mixed reaction of Dunbar's offspring and we are forced to question how well any of us can know anyone.The second theme of The Arbor is about the impact of the past and how it lingers in the present. From this perspective, the lip-syncing represents how the ghosts of the past still communicate through our present selves. The events of Dunbar's tragic and troubled life are replicated to some extent by what happens to her children. Lorraine in particular goes through a number of abusive boyfriends, gets into drugs and ends up in prison. Beyond Lorraine's remarks about her mother, the film gives very little clue as to how much her predicament is down to Andrea, compared to more general social problems or her own free will and foolishness.

The subjects dealt with in The Arbor are every bit as tough as those covered in Dunbar's plays nearly 30 years beforehand. There is frequent talk of drug abuse and addiction, along with prostitution, multiple teenage pregnancies, child mortality and alcoholism. When written out as a list like this, one might expect the film to go through these problems like a tick-box of 'working-class misery', or for the inhabitants of Bradford to be manipulated by a director wanting to take pot shots at modern Britain. But instead, the film treats these subjects in a very un-manipulative way. There is a great deal of shock and sadness on the part of the viewer, which comes simply from the way in which people talk about these things so candidly.Although it defies genre and comparison, the film to which The Arbor bears the closest resemblance is Savage Grace, Tom Kalin's twisted and difficult examination of the life and times of Barbara Daly Baekeland. On the surface the films couldn't be more different; The Arbor is a realistic account of 'the poor', while Savage Grace is a hyper-stylised, heavily choreographed examination of the filthy rich. But in both cases, the approaches which these films take are probably the only way you could have told these respective stories. It's very hard to make a film about 'underprivileged' individuals without resorting to clichés, stereotypes or mawkish sentimentality, and The Arbor deserves credit for steadfastly avoiding any of these.

The problems with The Arbor lie less in its ideas than the manner in which they are executed. After Andrea Dunbar dies just shy of the hour mark, the film steadily begins to lose its focus; it stops being a biopic per se but isn't quite sure where the stories should go from there. It becomes a film less about the character of Andrea than about the impact of her lifestyle, something which is even harder to pin down. It goes back and forth between Lisa, Lorraine and other relatives, all of whom have interesting things to say but to much less of an end.

From a more technical point of view, the film is lacking in some of its editorial decisions. On at least three occasions the screen fades to black at a point which seems like a fairly satisfying place to end. But on each occasion another scene starts up soon after, which gives the distinct impression of a film which either doesn't know how to end or which has multiple endings, none of which are conclusive. This could be intentional on the part of the filmmakers, showing how Dunbar's life and legacy will carry on beyond these stories. But even with that in place it still feels rather clumsy.The Arbor is one of the most unusual and striking films released this year, and should be praised for taking such an odd idea and carrying it through in such an enthralling way. Aside from a number of tough moments, it has technical and narrative flaws which prevent it from being a complete success. But you would be hard-pushed to find another documentary which is this hard-hitting, or another art film which is this understated. An intriguing and insightful piece of work.

Rating: 3.5/5
Verdict: A powerful and insightful portrait-of-sorts