A number of years ago, I saw Brian DePalma’s Blow Out, where John Travolta’s sound engineer, out recording ambient sound for future projects, gets the sound of a car tire blowing out that turns out to be more than what he initially thinks it is. I knew DePalma was greatly inspired and influenced by Alfred Hitchcock, but Blow Out was more clearly inspired by Italian director Michaelangelo Antonioni’s first English language film Blowup. I knew little about Blowup aside from that.
But then I learned it was leaving HBO Max by the end of the month. And if you want to know something, the best way to find out is to look into it.
Photographer Thomas (David Hemmings) is going about his business in swinging 60s London. He seems disaffected, taking high fashion photos and seemingly to be barely interested in what’s going on. One day, while out taking photos in a park, he snaps a photo that includes a young woman named Jane (Vanessa Redgrave), and she wants the photos back. Thomas says he will if she comes by his place and pays for them. She does, they hang out of a while shirtless, listen to music, try some drugs, and eventually he gives her a roll a film, she gives him a fake phone number, and then departs.
But then the strangest thing happens: a few blown up copies of the pictures he took in the park reveal a gunman and a possible murder. Thomas’s understanding of what he may have is gradual, and he goes about more of his daily business until it dawns on him to look into the murder. At no time does he think to call the police, and his own level of paranoia and the fact that none of his contacts seem capable of helping him leads him to even deeper existential despair. And given the general blurriness of his photos, did he actually see anything? Sure, it looks like a gunman, and there is some suspicious activity happening around him. But, in the end, is there any difference between a murder he can’t prove and a mime tennis match where he can’t see the ball?
Anyone looking for a movie with definitive answers shouldn’t come here. This isn’t that kind of movie. This more of a movie about mood, and the counterculture may be full of colorful artists, sex, drugs, and lax attitudes towards, well, anything else. Thomas can spend the day wrestling with a pair of naked models, but that doesn’t make him equipped to deal with a murder, particularly when it isn’t clear a murder even happened. After all, Thomas is the only witness, and his film disappears at some point while he’s out.
The net result is a movie where there’s only one man who might have seen something, and even he might not be sure. And if he can’t know for certain, can the audience? Does it matter? Thomas doesn’t even know the name of the dead man or how to find Jane again afterwards. When all anyone has a blurry photo that might be a dead man as evidence, perhaps a life of apathy is the best anyone can ask for.
Grade: A-
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