Notes on Antonioni's Blow Up

“To see or not to see that is the question”
Michelangelo Antonioni

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time
T. S. Eliot


The entire film of Antonioni it’s a quest, it’s a search. It’s a long journey toward the truth. The Truth for which Thomas, the main character of the film is looking for, is the Truth under all its aspects: metaphysical (ontological) – which regards the true nature of things, epistemological – which regards the truth of knowledge provided by our senses or by our rationality, and axiologic – which regards the true value of things. The entire film presents one day in the life a photographer, Thomas, one day in which we witness his profound transformation.


Antonioni:

“Inside of us things appear like dots of light in backgrounds of fog and shadow. Our concrete reality has a ghostly abstract quality.”

“We know that under the revealed image there is another one which is more faithful to reality, and under this one there is yet another, and again another under this last one, down to the true image of what absolute, mysterious reality is, and nobody will ever see. Or perhaps, not until the decomposition of every image, every reality“.