The Passenger
In Michelangelo Antonioni’s masterpiece THE PASSENGER, journalist David Locke (Jack Nicholson) decides, on one sweltering afternoon, to simply stop being himself. Weary of his successful but hollow existence, he impulsively trades his identity for that of a deceased hotel guest. It marks the beginning of a dreamlike road movie through desolate landscapes, where Locke discovers that while you can burn your passport, you can never truly outrun your own shadow.
The film’s existential restlessness finds its pulse in an iconic scene in a speeding convertible. When Maria Schneider asks what he is running away from, Locke offers no answer; he simply lets her feel the velocity. As the canopy of trees rushes past like a churning green sea, she spreads her arms in a trance of liberation. It is a rare moment of pure ecstasy in a story that constantly teeters on the edge between a new beginning and a slow disappearance.
With Nicholson at the height of his powers and Luciano Tovoli’s enigmatic cinematography, THE PASSENGER remains a visually stunning meditation on who we are once everything else is stripped away. Much like his earlier classics such as L’AVVENTURA, Antonioni crafts a haunting portrait of a man betrayed by the promises of modernity, searching for a foothold in a world that offers none.
This film screening is inspired by the new non-fiction book 'Liever lui dan moe' by film programmer Johannes De Breuker. Through filmmakers such as Sofia Coppola, Richard Linklater and Kogonada, he shows how we can reclaim our attention by embracing precisely what the digital world has taken from us: boredom. The book is available from our webshop.
