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Michaelangelo Antonioni has been given a hard time by some critics, and even more so by audiences. His Blow Up is an art house classic, and Zabriskie Point is the film that the critics love to hate. The Passenger is his best film, but a total failure in commercial terms (probably because it asks a lot of the audience and only rewards viewers who give it multiple viewings).The story behind the film is almost unimportant, in the way that the story behind Apocalypse Now is unimportant. It's a journey, a parade if you like through the last days of a disillusioned reporter working in some forgotten quarter of North Africa. He knows his life is pointless and he knows he's not lived it the way he truly wished he had. Then he finds a corpse in his hotel and decides to assume the identity of the dead man. Too late, he discovers that the dead man was involved with dangerous people and he has inadvertently become a revolutionary gunrunner.Jack Nicholson has never given a more restrained and quiet performance, but it works all the same. The backdrop is amazingly beautiful and makes the film visually extraordinary, like a painting of a film.I like this film a lot, but I can see reasons why it was a commercial disaster. I had to watch it three times before I began to piece together its elliptical plot. On each viewing, I found something new and interesting. But in all honesty, how many movie-goers are prepared to give a film that much time and effort? The ending is downbeat and a little intriguing, not to mention loose. Again, how many movie-goers are prepared to sit for two hours and not be rewarded with a grand, logical pay off? To enjoy this film, you need to be a patient watcher. You need to like visuals more than substance. You need to be happy to be challenged and happy to look beyond the surface. If that is you, then you will surely like this film.
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