Following up on the preceding post, and attempting to squarely address the OP's question, I did want to first address Scorcese's commentary on L'Eclisse and its ending. One thing he says that is of great value is that understanding what is NOT shown is as important, or even more so, than what is. Brilliant, and I hope to incorporate that in my own observations. But I obviously disagree that we must necessarily conclude that the ending means there will be no meeting of Vittoria and Piero, and that the relationship has in fact ended.
My previous post I believe has correctly identified L'Eclisse as a film where the thematic is primary over the narrative, and that in fact the core narrative of the film has ended before the end. The end therefore is a kind of summary, not advancing the narrative but focusing on the themes covered.
Summary is a useful word in particular when one considers it is likely, and in my view persuasive, that Antonioni did not seek to make some single point in the film, or even necessarily to have a unifying, single theme or concept. So does a summary refer often (given the subject matter, of course) to a sort of listing, or review, of items or elements previously addressed. What then are the main themes that have been covered? To what extent are they addressed in the end?
Man in the Landscape. One of the interesting things about L'Eclisse is how Antonioni includes both interiors and exteriors - on the face of it nothing remarkable about that! But it is the way he mixes them that is remarkable. The film begins in an apartment, the living room of Riccardo, and we then see as Vittoria opens the drapes a rather bizarre site, that being the tower of the EUR looming behind her. The comfortable bourgeois trappings of the living room, the material reality of the protagonist's soon to be discarded lover, are soon left behind as Vittoria heads out into at first a seemingly empty of humans landscape. A heavy suggestion of absence in turn as a reference to death arises. While not literally a dead landscape, of course neither is the desert setting in Zabriskie Point, where the lovers specifically contemplate the extent to which a desert is, and in fact is not, "dead".
More significantly, the landscape is shown as in effect an avenue of transit for the characters. The landscape has an intrinsic condition, but is also a means by which through time the characters move from one interior or other landscape, to another. Vittoria boards an airplane, journeys to Verona, eventually enters the bar at the airport, leaves, and not shown on the return flight to Rome, is implied to have done so (obviously). Eventually we see Piero and Vittoria meeting, usually outside (where did they meet when they went to Piero's parents' apartment? Or for their last meeting shown, in Piero's offices?). Such meetings are followed not by showing them together, inside, but of them separated.
I think the meaning here is that the landscape may have a state of existence that is indifferent to the hopes, intentions, actions, desires of the people who move through it, but also "permits" people to do all those things within them.
Note that while L'Eclisse for most of its length, from the beginning, contains mostly interior shots with the outdoor scenes serving a transitional purpose, also in advancing the narrative in addition to containing and addressing the film's themes, the end is entirely shot outdoors. This is a cue to how there will be no more advancement of the narrative, focused on interior events. But it also more than that.
Antonioni uses final scenes set in a landscape rather than an interior rather often. (Can't think right now of a film that ends "inside".) L'Avventura ends as it pointedly moves from an interior set where Claudia discovers her lover's infidelity to a wandering outside as they ponder the meaning of it. La Notte ends with the married couple alone on a golf course, pondering their future. Blow-up ends as the photographer is first shown in a park's open field, retrieving a mimed tennis ball, and then himself disappeared. This is intentional as a pattern. It is meant to suggest that we are to consider the context of the film previously seen as occurring within a larger world that is indifferent to our existence.
Doubling. The doublings that we see throughout L'Eclisse continue into its ending. The blonde woman seen from behind we expect to be Vittoria was foreshadowed by the woman leaving her apartment building the first evening of the narrative. a reference to topical news, the potential of nuclear annihilation, is refernced by the newspaper carried by the older man. An earlier shot of airplanes flying high overhead, again an implicit reference to war, is doubled by a similar reference, pointed out by a man to a woman on the roof of a building. Transit through the landscape is referenced by a bus carrying people home. But parallels to interiors are pointedly not "doubled" in the ending.
Role of Love, and the Love Affair. If it is conceded that the narrative of the love affair between Piero and Vittoria is not advanced in the ending, does that mean it, and the question of love in general, has no part of it, either? I don't think so. Going back to Scorcese's observation, what are we to make of the lack of presence by either or both of them in the ending? I think it has something to do with the connection, described by John Updike and others of course, between sex, the erotic, and not death itself so much as that it replaces anxiety over death with an experience that suggests, provides glimpse of, the transcendent, the divine, the transformative possibilities of life itself. No lovers are in the ending, not them in particular, or others. THere are people, including the couple on the roof - are they lovers? I think we are not meant to see any of the people primarily as references to sex.
So, in this semi-urban landscape, love is not so much absent (just as life in the desert in Zabriskie Point is not really absent), as it is not examined. One could easily conclude from this that Antonioni is saying romantic love is not an answer to whatever challenge, or question, is presented in examining the landscape. There may be something to that. But I don't think that is the same as saying love has no purpose, and should be viewed as no answer to nihilism. Again, the people shown probably to some extent are lovers, who love someone else, are loved by others. No, I think the end by the absence of Piero and Vittoria refers to them, and their love, but much as it does not advance their narrative, it does not draw unambiguous conclusions from or about them.
As noted yesterday their affair has a detached quality, and is examined in a detached way for the most part. The ending "detaches" from their affair rather conclusively. Among other things I think this means that the ending is primarily NOT about their love story. What then is it about?
Eclipses, Shadows, Shrouds, Light and Dark. Thematically and despite decided elements of ambiguity in L'Eclisse, the choice of title, not to mention the several references to it and various meanings of it, metaphorically and as a practical occurrence, is relatively clear in respect of what this film is about. In an astronomical eclipse a dark body passes in front of a light one, blocking out that light, but only temporarily and even only partially. It is in short a dynamic process, briefly seeming to extinguish a light source, but in fact only preventing us from seeing that light.
Applying this notion, this process which may serve as metaphor, to this film, what is the light in question, and what may be blocking it? Several possibilities might serve as answers.
First of all, light is often a metaphor for awareness. Something or someone "sheds light" on something else is a way of describing increasing awareness. But how does the end provide any understanding of this?
The end takes place during advancing twilight. By the end it is nearly dark, and the streetlights come on, with a single one the film's last vision, brightly lit. But of course such light is no literal answer to the preceding question. Still, I think there is something at work here.
The ending is not the only nighttime outside shot in the film. There is the scene that takes place outside Vittoria's apartment building. There is the latter scene beginning in Vittoria's apartment with Rita and Marta, one shot from her apartment to the higher one where the three women together are, followed by the search for the dog, outside in the darkness. But also where there is enough light not only to see the dogs, but the row of wavering poles that so transfixes Vittoria. There is also the encounter between Piero and a woman who is strongly implied has served as a casual sex partner for him. In all cases the nature of darkness and how it affects what occurs in the scenes is not explicitly addressed, and yet in hindsight the darkness does affect what occurs.
Hiding in darkness, Vittoria can see Riccardo, outside but lit by some indirect street or other outdoor light(s). The dark seems to facilitate the drunk's ability to not be seen stealing Piero's car before Piero sees him driving it, already having stolen it. Vittoria first seems to hear the poles moving before she sees them, and the half light in which they move alters their appearance, making them seem magical. The darkness in Piero's meeting with the other woman has a more metaphorical purpose. Their encounter is in public, but the darkness renders them anonymous to passers by, and certainly does not occur inside, before others who would know them. It makes the encounter seem intended to be hidden.
Darkness also is involved in several other scenes, where Antonioni employs forms of shrouds. There is the shroud Vittoria holds before her while sitting on her bed while talking of her previous night with Riccardo. We briefly cannot see her face, her expression, as she refers to the night with him. But then we can, as she seems to dismiss the encounter, and by extension Riccardo himself and her relationship with him. Later she holds a translucent white curtain before her during her last encounter with Piero. While we can still see her through the curtain, it does tend to render her expression less clear as we seek to understand her emotions and intentions.
What then do these dynamics, these eclipses, mean? Much as the landscape themes show, light itself is indifferent, but allows those who can see, who choose to see, what is seen. In total darkness Vittoria would have still heard the poles, but would not have seen them, and not know what they were. Yet the halflight, the partial eclipse, not only allows her to see them, but also gave them a beauty that probably would not have "been there" in daylight.
Many commentators address the skeptical view Antonioni seems to have of modern civilization and its existential effect on us. With war, the threat of death, tied into such civilizatino in its peculiarly tranformed way. Such a theme does fit with the eclipse metaphor. Piero's materialism seems to block an understanding between Vittoria and him. Many rightly note that Vittoria is the only character who expresses a lack of connection to a materialistic relation to the world and life.
But if the eclipse metaphor is followed, should not civilization's blocking of real love and understanding pass, at least potentially? Following the metaphor would seem to in fact require such an understanding.
The same is true of the landscape. Darkness comes, but so does the dawn. Darkness is falling during the end, but a light created by man lights up the darkness. To be clear I am not saying the ending is optimistic so much as realistic - darkness, shrouding, eclipses, are not permanent. They are transient.
A few loose ends. Water flowing from the oil drum references the dynamic of change over time. Eventually the water within runs out. Permanance, the unchanging cycles, exist with transience always present. The landscape suggests permanence, but construction of the building will alter it. The haphazard collection of stacked building materials themselves suggest buildings, and one day will be part of a building or buildings.
People come and go, death is alluded to, but the landscape is neither death nor the absence of death, never entirely either people in love nor the absence of love. People themselves love, but are also transient, and love of the one can be and often is transient, even if love itself always exists.
i think that is what the end is about. It is a summary of the themes of the film, as noted above.
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