The Passenger

Michelangelo Antonioni - 1975
Antonioni's camera works in an interesting way. Often it moves away from the person it starts on, or moves towards them. It would be uncomfortable to film in a 'normal' way. There is more handheld, movement around than I can remember in other Antonioni. This atmosphere is also in the framings. Decentered, often for some reason to our right.
And it is always Antonioni's edit that really gets me. Never ever does he make the obvious move. Space isn't the continous entity. Supposedly SRS scenes will take a different angle than expected in the 'reverse', we will move away, the 'action' will be obscured. Notice also the architecture; how it is framed, in his often perpendicular compositions, to glower over, to reflect confusion in some of Gaudi and other's escher-like contraptions, that people are forced to walk through.
Colour is as ever key. Nicholson seems very red, and his clothes are often violently sperated from the surroundings. Yet he can also sink in; perhaps always the opposite of what he wants. A man out place.
What happens in an Antonioni film? The realisation that the course of events isn't part of a grand plan, but just one step in front of another. Nicholson is over his head, strange conspiracies, in flavourless international locations, pop up. He can't escape his identity, but neither one seems real.
He can't stand the camera turned on himself. The man cured from blindness sees too much to live as part of the world, like Locke, the documentatrian. I feel about this as I do 'Blow-Up'; a clear extrapolation of Antonioni's themes, when he is at his best in the earlier works when pure visuals take over.