Antonioni certainly has a style about him. Blow-Up, or Blowup, is rather atypical for him because it’s in English but it still has his trademark silence, beauty, and weirdness. I’ve always admired his ability to tell a story with moving pictures and almost no dialogue or music. I think it makes people uncomfortable today to sit through a film in which the characters rarely speak and there are no musical cues to trigger emotions. Antonioni’s characters often do bizarre things that seem to have nothing to do with anything making it hard to understand their emotions and motivations. The plot, such as it often is, is obfuscated by throw-away scenes and non sequiturs. Caring for or identifying with the characters seems to be of little importance to Antonioni, except in the abstract. And you can forget about tying up loose ends.

Blow-Up is not my favorite Antonioni. That place is reserved for L’Avventura. But I liked it and would recommend it to anyone looking for something different.