The Passenger

Michelangelo Antonioni is one of the giants of the cinema, and his films are full of beauty and truth, but he doesn’t just drop it in your lap. View an Antonioni film, and you need to agree that you will meet him partway. That’s why many feel that his films are difficult and esoteric – They are about big things that don’t compress easily. Other filmmakers might talk about love or material gain. With Antonioni, that is only part of the story. The Passenger, from 1975, has all the DNA of Antonioni. It’s about a man who embarks on a bizarre quest for something that neither he nor the viewer sees.

The film opens with David Locke (Jack Nicholson) working in the deserts of Africa. He is a reporter looking for a story about a revolutionary military faction, but his quarry is hard to find. These first few passages of the film don’t get you any closer to Locke – In fact, there is virtually no dialogue. The main thing established here, is Lockes isolation. There’s nobody else around, and the landscape of rock and sun-baked sand enhance a mood of alienation and frustration. Locke ultimately gets his Land Rover hopelessly stuck in the sand; a metaphor if I ever saw one.

Making his way back to his hotel, Locke goes to check in with his one acquaintance in this place; a Brit named Robertson who is staying in the next room. Entering the room, he finds the man dead on his bed. Antonioni draws this section of the film out, as Locke quietly investigates the body, and goes through his things. Locke pauses frequently, and we can see him mulling over something. There’s something going on here, but it’s not quite clear what. Finally, we see Locke carefully cutting and switching the passports. So, Locke switches identities with a dead man. Why? That’s the question that the rest of The Passenger is about.

The thing about this film that frustrates some is that Antonioni doesn’t just come out and give you the answer. He offers hints, and little indirect suggestions, but you have to be watching for them. That’s why it’s notable that we have spent time with Locke in such a stark, isolated environment as the desert. Antonioni was already starting to tell us about David Locke. He’s a man unto himself, who is unmoored from relationships with others.

The new identity comes with one big caveat – Locke knows nothing about Robertson. There is a short recording of a conversation Locke has with the other man, and Locke listens to it to give himself some insight. Robertson just refers to himself as a businessman, and the tape is laughably vague about who Roberson was. It does, however, give us a little extra insight into Locke, who states at one point “However hard you try, it’s so difficult to get away from your old habits.”

The only clues that Locke has to the new identity are Robertsons schedule book, which indicate a meeting in Barcelona, and a note that says “Munich” and what appears to be a locker number. Following the lead to Germany reveals info on military hardware and a meeting with two men trying to buy guns. This revelation about Robertson doesn’t scare Locke off despite what might seem to be illegal activity. It doesn’t seem that Locke even really cares about the details of his new identity. It’s just a new direction to go in. An interesting scene during the Munich portion has Locke going for a ride on a cable car. As the car passes over water, Locke leans out and flaps his arms like a bird. Antonioni shoots this from above and cuts off the frame at the waist, and thus giving the illusion of Locke flying away.

The film starts following another plotline, and that is of Lockes wife Rachel (Jenny Runacre). Practically the first utterance we hear from her is an admission that “We hadn’t been too close the last couple of years.” Believing her husband to be dead, she starts to look at some of his old video, trying to piece things together. This seems more cathartic than an act out of loss and sorrow. She doesn’t really show any outward signs of grief, and in fact has plainly been having an affair for some time. It’s more a late effort to try to understand her husband. On one of these videos, she sees him speak of “Leaving it all behind.”

If the actions of Locke and his wife are murky, then The Girl (Maria Schneider) is a complete enigma. Locke meets her in Barcelona, and they begin a strange relationship. Schneider was in her early twenties when The Passenger was made, but here, she seems much younger, perhaps even in her teens. She is portrayed as a free-spirited student, but it’s hard to get a handle on the connection with Locke. She may see him as a mysterious, adventurous lark, but it’s hard to tell. Despite the fact that the two do sleep together, it is not a sexual tryst. It seems in one scene that she is prepared to betray Locke to an old colleague who is looking for Robertson, and it is only a traffic mix-up which prevents it. This, after Locke has said that he doesn’t want to see the man. We are left guessing with the Girl, because she says nothing about herself. It seems that Locke never even knows what her name is.

At some point, Locke has to have come to the realization that he’s not going to be able to pull off this con forever. His wife has the police looking for Robertson, she has come to Spain herself, and the arms customers are also in the mix, because they have given him a large sum of money. It seems that Rachel might have some inkling that something funny is up with this Robertson person, and the film teases with her pursuit of him. At one point, she is literally only a few inches away from her husband, but doesn’t see him.

There’s a story that Locke tells the Girl late in the film that is probably the best window into what is going on with him. He tells about a friend who has been blind, and had an operation that restored his sight. At first, life was great, but eventually, he began to notice how dirty everything was, eventually, that was all he could see, and he ended up committing suicide. It’s not hard to see that Locke sees things the same way.

The culmination of The Passenger is its famous final scene, where an exhausted Locke flops on a bed in a remote hotel. The camera slowly pans past him and out the window to the courtyard. A car comes by. The arms customer drive in and one of them perhaps goes into the hotel. The Girl wanders about, peering into the room. A police car pulls in. The camera starts to turn back to the room. Another police car pulls up, carrying Rachel. The camera goes back to a long shot of the room, with Locke lying dead on the bed as Rachel, The Girl, and the police enter the room. Is there significance to the fact that we are unable to see Lockes’ face in this shot? Yes and no. I think this is done for two reasons – One, it’s to re-establish Locke as a man without self, and secondly, it’s a reference back to Robertson dead on the bed in Africa. That’s where the whole story started.

There’s an interesting point that I saw in reading another commentary on this film. The Italian title is Professione: Reporter – about Locke. In English it’s The Passenger. Does the English title suggest that the film is really about the Girl? I don’t think so. To me, Locke is also a passenger. He’s someone who took the husk of someone else’s life and took it for a ride to see where it would end up. The story ended right where it started; Lying on a bed in a remote hotel. Locke has become the other man.

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The final scene