Unresolved Stories and Open-Ended Narratives

[Chris Knipp]

Jolly good. If they buy that, then how can they not like him?

[oscar jubis]

I think it is easier to appreciate the compositional beauty and poetry of Antonioni's images, the way he creates relationships or rhymes between characters and elements in the landscape, natural and man-made, that are truly visual metaphors, the editing of certain scenes, the way Anna dissolves faster than Sandro in the last scene in which we see her, etc. One thing is to show this to 19 year olds and teach them to recognize Antonioni's artistry; and another thing is to expect most of them to enjoy watching all 2 hours 23 minutes of it in one sitting.

[Chris Knipp]

And yet when I was a 19-year-old nothing delighted me more: that's what I mean by saying you can't teach anybody to love any works of art. Or you can, perhaps. This is why I have great admiration for high school teachers in public schools: they must "sell" their subjets. The assumption is that in college, which I taught -- only once high school, very briefly -- students come to your class open to your subject, at least if it is not a required course, relatively speaking, anyway. Mainly, I think, the thing to do is to awaken those who can love your subject to its manifold pleasures. Those who can't will have to sit quiet.