"Darfur Now" – and Celebrity Activists
By Stephen B. Hunt

There's a scene in Ted Braun's documentary Darfur Now that tells you everything you need to know about the current craze of celebrity activism: George Clooney in his Beijing hotel room, ironing a shirt to wear the next morning to a meeting with Chinese officials to discuss the situation in Darfur, particularly a request for China to divest itself from dealing with companies that do business in Sudan.

George Clooney is commonly referred to, amongst other things, as the world's most eligible bachelor. There are plenty of fun ways for him to spend his spare time. But ironing your own shirts in a Beijing hotel room? Isn't that what middle management business consultants do on the fourth night of a five-night road trip across the American Midwest?

Furthermore, the scene is shot not by an anonymous cameraman, but by Don Cheadle, Clooney's activist partner-in-crime, who was forced to China by the last-minute nature of the trip - Clooney called Cheadle two days prior to ask him to meet with Chinese officials to discuss divestment in Sudan. Because Braun and crew couldn't possibly have assembled the required visas and plane tickets in 48 hours, Cheadle ended up doing double duty, attending meetings and shooting the trip. (Oscar-nominated actors do somehow seem to possess superpowers when it comes to last-minute travel.)

Director Braun, an articulate, earnest 46-year-old Los Angeles resident who grew up in Vermont, chats about Cheadle over a pot of tea at the Park Hyatt in Toronto, where three days earlier he debuted Darfur Now at the Toronto International Film Festival: "He gets a [Director of Photography] credit in this film, incidentally. He's very proud of that. And I'm very proud, too. And some of his interviews from Beijing are incredible!"

Darfur Reality on Film

Darfur Now, Braun's mesmerizing documentary about the conflict, focuses its lens on what is possible rather than miring itself in the coulda, woulda, shoulda of how, and why things sometimes go horribly wrong in places. By exploring the conflict through the stories of six different individuals involved in trying to stop the genocide in Darfur, Braun has created a rather remarkable document: This literally is a film about how to change the world.

There's the war crimes prosecutor (Luis Moreno-Ocampo), who lived through the horror of the Argentine military junta of the 1970s and is determined to bring justice to Sudan; Adam Sterling, a California waiter who spends his tip money printing postcards encouraging Californians to force their state government to divest their state pension fund from companies who do business with Sudan; Pablo Recalde, a World Bank employee whose job it is to get food convoys through to the victims in Darfur; Hejewa Adam, a rebel whose child was killed by the "Janjaweed" (devils on horseback), who arms herself to fight back against them; and Don Cheadle, who, together with George Clooney, lends his celebrity to the aim of raising the public profile of the fight against the genocide in Darfur.

Darfur Now was financed by Warner Independent Pictures and guaranteed a theatrical release (Nov. 2), so Braun was able to film with the cinema in mind, and it shows. Weaving together footage and sound shot and recording with local crews, he creates a seamless chronicle of six people (plus Clooney) in search of a common solution to a horrifying situation. Once in a while, such as when California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signs a bill prohibiting the State of California from investing its pension fund in companies who do business with Sudan, the paths of Adam Sterling and Cheadle and Clooney cross; otherwise, each operates in isolation from the other. And, despite the relative rankings of celebrity, Cheadle receives no special treatment. His is one aspect of a complex story that demands action from many angles.

Or, as director Braun so eloquently puts it, "It's clear to the people I spoke with that the (Sudanese) population needs help from the international community on the level of basic justice. This was a cry I heard repeatedly - and without justice, human beings lose their dignity."
Hejewa Adam in director Ted Braun's documentary: "I will die for Darfur."

Force of Personality

While each of the subjects works towards the same goal, each toils alone - sort of like director Braun, who has fashioned what must surely be the world's first upbeat genocide documentary.

So... Question: Can famous people use their celebrity status to change the world? Whether it's Cheadle, Clooney, Matt Damon and Mia Farrow on Darfur; Steven Spielberg on China; Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie and Madonna on African poverty; or Leonardo DiCaprio and Al Gore on the environment, celebs over the past five years have made a canny commitment: using the magnet that is their celebrity to attract attention to some of the worst places on Earth. And they have been able, bit by bit, to change our perception of those places.

At the very least, they have forced us all to open our eyes and watch, to bear witness to the horror instead of remaining comfortable - and oblivious - in our carefully cultivated First World cocoons.

In 2005, Angelina Jolie secured a meeting with Sierra Leone president Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, with several Sierra Leone civil rights groups in attendance (the first time they'd ever been granted an audience with the President), to talk about the impact of that civil war on its citizens.

"I see Angelina as the perfect humanitarian advocate," said Sierra Leone activist Gavin Simpson, in an interview with San Francisco Chronicle reporter Jonathan Curiel. "She brings an immense amount of international focus and attention with her, but she never seeks to use it for her own benefit. On the contrary, she sends the spotlight directly to civic society advocates and makes them more effective and powerful in their own society."

"It was Cathy Schulman (Crash co-producer), who has known Don for years, who suggested that Don's own activism on the Darfur issue might qualify him as a subject in the film," Braun says. "I hadn't originally considered him as one of the characters in the film. As I got to know Don, and understood how his interest grew out of making Hotel Rwanda, how I saw how he approached this with such humility and human curiosity, I thought he, as a person, would be an interesting subject because he, as a human, interested me."

Would any of that have happened if the producer (along with Cheadle) hadn't just produced Crash, Academy Award winner as Best Picture of 2006? Would Warners have been just as enthusiastic about guaranteeing theatrical release to a documentary about a genocide in Western Sudan without the comfort of having a familiar movie star take us there? It's tough to say.

Fame and Focus

What's indisputable, however, is that things are changing there. In Toronto, Clooney gave a press conference where he, by turns, promoted his new film Michael Clayton (a thriller about corporate malfeasance), riffed about celebrities who become famous for doing nothing at all, and delivered updates about the politics of divestment in Darfur.

"It's a tricky time right now," Clooney said. "China's finally stepping up a little bit. You've got the first real movement in two years." Then, addressing the issue of trying to negotiate with the government of Sudan, some members of which have been indicted for war crimes in the Darfur situation, he said, "Listen, I'd rather have people talking, even if you don't like them and they're unsavory. I'd rather have them sitting in a room talking."

Braun - who was part of a Darfur panel at Toronto that included Cheadle and actor Danny Glover as well as Sterling and Ocampo-Moreno - wants to set the record straight for those who question the motivation of celebrities who use their fame to promote activist issues, something which cuts to the heart of the cynicism of the western world on the subject.

"Most people think celebrities get involved with political causes or the Third World in order to draw attention to themselves," he says. "What they don't understand is that they already get plenty of attention. They figure if the cameras are going to follow them everywhere, why not point them towards something that needs it?"

One of the saddest things about wars is they suck up manpower, media attention and political will that could be better spent elsewhere. While Iraq burned, Darfur fell to pieces; since 2003, more than 200,000 have died and 2.5 million have been displaced in a dispute that no one wanted to talk about until movie stars got involved.

It isn't easy to change the world. This movie helps make that happen.

And check out the current issue of Moving Pictures magazine (The Global Issue) on newsstands now for more timely and timeless, and provocative, articles.
Photos © 2007 A/W Documentary, LLC and Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. Top photo by Lynsey Addario. Homepage image of Don Cheadle by Samantha Casolan.

Kevin Bacon's "Death Wish"
Photos courtesy 2007 20th Century Fox
By Elliot V. Kotek
(Moving Pictures Blockbuster issue, Summer 2007)

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After sixty-plus projects in a career that transitioned from the footlights to the spotlight, Kevin Bacon has been objectified as a game piece interconnecting everyone in entertainment. The fact that he is "amusingly" perceived as a common denominator not only highlights the range of work the youthful actor has undertaken over the past twenty-five years, but underscores Bacon's uncanny ability to portray the everyman despite a level of fame that few artists attain, and fewer still sustain.

2007 marks a busy year of releases for the Pennsylvania-born 49-year-old. In addition to launching his charity, Six Degrees Community, at the Sundance Film Festival, Bacon spans the cinematic landscape with low-budget indies such as The Air I Breathe (Tribeca Film Festival), Saving Angelo, Rails & Ties and Fox Studio's Death Sentence (co-starring John Goodman and directed by the first Saw's young Australian helmer, James Wan).

Moving Pictures caught up with Kevin Bacon on his way to the Apollo Theater in Harlem, where he was being honored (along with his wife, Kyra Sedgwick) with the Ruby Dee & Ossie Davis Arts and Humanitarian Award.

MPM: Death Sentence - given its history with the Death Wish franchise, it's probably the closest you've come to joining an existing franchise. Is that a conscious decision you've made to avoid franchise films?
Bacon: No, no, not at all. I never thought about it; I just do them one at a time. I mean, they went off and made, I think, two or three more Tremors, and I was in the first one of those. And I was in the first Friday the 13th, if you want to talk about franchises. But, of course, I was dead, so no opportunities there.

MPM: Did you watch any of Charles Bronson's Death Wish films?
Bacon: I looked at Death Wish. Of course, I saw it when it came out. Obviously, it's very different from Death Sentence in that Death Sentence isn't really a vigilante movie. Death Sentence is more about a guy who gets pushed to the edge and makes this mistake of reacting in an extremely emotional way and not letting the legal system run its course, and it kinda becomes this train wreck for him that spins out of control.

If you look at Death Wish, Bronson doesn't even go after the guys who hurt his family, he goes after all of Manhattan. It was just a very different kind of vibe. It was also really an interesting movie sociologically because, at that point in time, there was a lot of fear about urban centers and a lot of fear surrounding urban life, and New York was the epicenter of that and it was thought of as a place run by drug dealers and heroin addicts and corruption. That movie, I think, really taps into all those fears about urban life and, I think, had a really long and powerful impact on the rest of the country. For years and years, people - even to this day - will say, "Oh, my God, you live in New York. Oh, my God, it's so dangerous."

I've lived here since 1976, so I've seen the city go through the changes. But even though it was a very different place back then, it still didn't feel as bad as it was portrayed in the movies.

MPM: Does Death Sentence seek to weigh in on hot-button topics like gun culture?
Bacon: I don't know if it's weighing in on that kind of stuff. I mean, there's an element of the movie that is almost like a western, really - a western vibe in an urban center.

When I read Death Sentence, I kind of looked at it and went, "Wow." Just the title alone, I was sort of like, "Oh, I don't know." And as I read on, I found it to be a really emotional and interesting exploration of an extremely average guy who was pushed into an extremely unusual situation. I was really interested in the transformation of the guy. I've got these pictures - photographs - of who I was at the start of the film and what I look like at the end of the film, and it's a really extreme... [a] kinda transformation that the guy goes through. And that's what you look for as an actor.

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Photos courtesy 2007 20th Century Fox

MPM: In terms of the actor physically transforming himself for a role, John C. Reilly says he starts with the shoes 'cause that's the way the character relates to the earth, and I've heard Sean Penn remark that he starts with the hair. Is there a way you consistently go about it?
Bacon: I work from the inside out. First off, I try to find as much as I can in my own experience, in my own life, that I can relate to. In this case, the deepest well that you have is your relationship and your feelings about your own children, so when you think about something horrible happening to your own children, that turns on the tap full bore.

Then I start to say, "Okay, well, what's different about this guy?" This guy's not an artist. He doesn't live a vagabond lifestyle. He's got a boring job. He has a lot of skills that I could never have: accountant, pushing the pen and counting numbers. He's very, very different from me in a lot of ways.

So I try to find the things that are similar. And I try to find the things that are different. Then I start to think about someone who I know who's kinda like him, and all of a sudden, it hit me that there's this guy that I know... He actually happens to be in the business but he's a wholesome sort of family man - button down, golf on the weekends, square kind of thing that was nothing that I could relate to - so that's when I start to move out. I agree with John C. that shoes are extremely important and I agree with Sean that the hair is important; all those things are, and the way that you move, the way that you stand, the way that you talk. That's the process of putting the guy together.

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Photos courtesy 2007 20th Century Fox

MPM: On the flip side, do you think too much press attention is focused on actors' physical transformations?
Bacon: I think that, like anyone else, if someone does a huge physical transformation then that's always kind of interesting and fascinating to watch, and God knows it's something that people really respond to when it comes to Oscars and stuff like that. I also think that there's a lot of really interesting performances where, all of a sudden, somebody taps into something, and they just look and talk like you've seen them look and talk before but they just happen to be doing something that's just stunning in its simplicity and in its ability.

Personally, I'm often amazed at what someone can do, sometimes, without a huge physical transformation. And then there are those people who try to attempt something and, basically, give us the same performance time and time again. Kyra and I always joke and say, "Same performance, different hair."

MPM: When you were directing Loverboy, you created iPod playlists for the main characters to help them to find their characters. Do you make a playlist for yourself, also?
Bacon: Well, there [are] two things that I do. One is that I'll create a playlist that brings on a certain kind of mood for me. For Death Sentence, for this character as he transformed, it would be sort of from what I consider...sad and moody and young kind of stuff to, as the transformation happens, more kinda hardcore, edgy, put-you-on-edge sort of Metallica and stuff like that. And for the actual character, I think his taste is probably much blander; he kind of leans towards classic rock.

MPM: What is it about music that makes it this common denominator?
Bacon: I think that it's inside all of us and it's, well... For me, I go through life and I go through my performances, and there's always some tune in my head and certainly some rhythm. And there's a lot of rhythm, I think, to the way that I approach my acting, and a lot of music in the way that I approach it. And I think that music becomes the bookmarks for our lives; it becomes the soundtrack that we can always kind of recall and it'll send us back to another time, another place.

MPM: How is it different working on Death Sentence, where you and John Goodman are the most experienced guys on set, the teachers so to speak, as opposed to something like Mystic River or Sleepers, where you're acting with your peers?
Bacon: There's also the director. That's the other piece of it. I mean, James [Wan] directed two other movies, as opposed to working with someone like Clint, where he's got, whatever, thirty movies that he's directed. I don't ever come into an experience going, "Hey, okay, look out everybody; I know more about this than you do," because you look at someone like James Wan - I mean, he's a real artist and he's got really, really strong ideas visually, script-wise, story-wise, character-wise, clothing, everything. So it's not like I'm in a situation where I'm gonna take him to school. He knows what he wants and how he wants to get it, and that's what I want in a director, whether he's 18 years old or 80 years old.

I do feel like, when I work with someone like that, it's really nice for it to feel like a collaboration. I really felt like we were a team on this. And I think when you sort of form a team above the line, that makes the young guys who were involved in the movie want to step up. They were extremely committed and extremely hardworking, really wanted to go to bat and also really wanted to learn more about the business and stuff like that. It's funny, because I only really enjoy that up to a certain point and then I'm kinda like, "Can't we just, like, all hang out? I think I'm dropping these pearls of wisdom that are probably gonna be no use to you anyway."

MPM: Was there a particular mentor for you as you came through the ranks?
Bacon: A lot of people. I went from being on the stage a lot. I did play after play after play, sometimes regional theater and sometimes in New York, and I would look and listen and watch and absorb what I could. I had a lot of cockiness, too. I felt like by the time I was in my early 20s that I pretty much knew everything there was to know about acting and about the business and about life and about women and... You know what I mean? I was incredibly self-assured, and the truth is that I was learning then and I'm learning now. I didn't know as much as I thought I did.

I remember having a great conversation once with Elliott Gould. He gave me a whole bunch of advice to take. I can't a hundred percent remember what it was, but I remember thinking, "Boy, this is great. I got a lot of great advice here." I remember having a good chat with William Hurt. He was a great influence of mine and he had some words of wisdom for me... I can't remember what they were.

MPM: At what stage did you think this was going to be your career?
Bacon: Well, from the time I was 13... I said, "That's it. It's over. This is all I'm gonna do for the rest of my life." To me, that's the only way to go, though, in an acting career.

I took a few classes. I was an apprentice at a theater - swept up the stage, literally, and that was it; I was hooked. I was set, and I was very pigheaded and dogged in my desire to do it, get it done: get outta high school as soon as possible; get to New York as soon as possible; get an agent; get a job, any job; work. Also, it wasn't about study. It wasn't about going to any kind of higher plane with my study. I felt it was really like I had a really strong desire to work and make a living at it.

I never thought to myself, "I need something to fall back on." I never thought to myself, "I'm gonna try this for a while and see how it goes." I don't think you can do that if you want a career in the arts. I think there's too many people out there that are gonna shoot you down, kick your ass, send you back.

MPM: Was there a point in time in your career where you felt comfortable that other people were going to allow you to do this for a long time?
Bacon: No; I'm waiting for that moment. I don't feel like I've ever really said, "Okay, now I'm cool. I've done it. I'm all right." I guess I went back and forth between waiting tables and working as an actor so many times that when I stopped waiting tables, that was a moment that felt pretty good. But you always feel like it's all gonna blow up in your face at any moment.

MPM: Do you still feel that same desire and need to act, or can it be any creative field that gives you that fulfillment?
Bacon: I'd still like to act. I really love playing in my band. I really love writing and recording music. I love directing. I love it when you can get an idea and develop it and turn it into something, even if it doesn't become a piece of film or television; that whole process. But I don't think I'll ever stop acting because acting is very... It's very therapeutic.

And just when I get frustrated with it and get frustrated with the business, and just when I think, "Oh, shit. I'm too old for doing this - having this kind of emasculating gig... Let me do something else. This is stupid," I'll read something and I'll say, "Yeah, now this is gonna be cool. I haven't done this before," or "I'm ready to get back in the saddle here."

MPM: I know you've directed a couple of episodes of "The Closer," but why not direct more features?
Bacon: The only problem with directing features is you have to really find a story that you are 100 percent committed to telling. It just takes years to develop the material, find the money, pre-production, post-production. So when it comes to features, I will do it again, but it's... It’s carving out the time.

I think that some of the stuff that's coming up now in the digital video world is interesting, because I sometimes like trying to create something with less of a palette. The last episode that I did of "The Closer," I started to use a little bit of digital video, and I'm finding it to be really kind of interesting and incredibly light and quick and flexible.

MPM: Any particular directors whose style you feel like you've adopted?
Bacon: Well, the person that I would most aspire to direct like is Clint [Eastwood], because he's incredibly efficient, incredibly fast. He just doesn't f-ck around and doesn't waste time, and tells great stories - meaningful stories, deep stories - and does them with just an incredible facility to get it done. And I think that one of the frustrating things, especially as you get older as an actor, is just the amount of wasted time on a movie set - an insane amount of bullshit that goes on that just doesn't have to - and when you work with someone like that who knows exactly what he wants because he's so clear about what he's gonna do in the editing room, it's just incredibly refreshing.

MPM: Was it weird being directed by Clint's daughter, Allison, on the upcoming Rails & Ties? Does she have a similar sort of style, or...?
Bacon: I really didn't think about him when I was working with her. I really tried to give her the respect and just approach her as her own being. Is her style similar? I guess in some ways, maybe. I mean, she's much younger, obviously, and just has just a different approach. It's different just based on the fact that she is directing for the first time.

MPM: And you've been cast in Frost/Nixon. It reunites you with director Ron Howard, who you worked with on Apollo 13. There are only a couple of other directors you've worked with more than once: John Hughes (Planes, Trains & Automobiles; She's Having a Baby) and Barry Levinson (Diner; Sleepers).
Bacon: Yeah, I know. They don't seem to hire me more than once very often. It's a weird thing. I'm not sure why that is. It's gonna be great to work with Ron again. It's been a long time, so I'm looking forward to it.

MPM: Do you use a different approach to working on a character based on fact rather than fiction?
Bacon: Well, I'll tell you what's interesting is that I've hardly ever done it. I'm just about to start a thing for HBO called "Taking Chance," which is based on a real guy, Lt. Col. Mike Strobl, and we've been spending some time together. And it's a funny kind of moment when you sit down with someone, and they look at you, and you look at them and say, "I'm gonna be you." It's an interesting dynamic.

But the thing is with both of these guys, Jack Brennan and Mike Strobl, it's not like playing Ray Charles. I have to find the essence of them as opposed to convince everyone that I am the person whom they've seen their whole lives. That's something that I've never had to do but I think must be quite a challenge. That's like Guy Pearce, recently, as Warhol - he was just absolutely amazing. I just so believed him as Andy Warhol. I'd met Warhol, and I just... It was uncanny.

MPM: Do you think that not living in L.A. has also been a factor in your career?
Bacon: I think that [New York] gives me something as an artist. I think that it fills me up every day. I don't know if L.A. would be the same. It's hard for me to say, but it definitely... I mean, I'm constantly asked to portray real people; and I walk every day; I ride the subway every day; I surround myself, just by nature of where I live, with real people. My friends aren't all movie stars and celebrities, and that's not who I play. I play celebrities rarely, so that's one thing that's been great about a life in New York.

MPM: How active is your website, SixDegrees.org?
Bacon: It's been great. I mean, it's beyond my wildest dreams in terms of what's taken off since the launch [in January]. I guess we've raised up to $700,000, or something like that. We're looking to really keep moving it up and beyond. The truth is that people say, "Oh, you've done so much for me." It's been a really kinda easy thing. It was really the concept - with some money - and it was finding and working and continuing to work with a great group of people that really understand the world of philanthropy, which is something that's kinda new to me.

But we...I mean I... kinda check in a couple of times a week and talk about what our next move is and [about] working with various corporate sponsors and trying to kind of improve the functionality of the site so that it continues to work and interface with as many other Web pages, et cetera, as possible. It seems to be going really well.

MPM: You launched SixDegrees.org at Sundance, and The Air I Breathe screened at Tribeca. What do you think about the relationship between film distribution and film festivals now?
Bacon: I think that some have become markets and some have not, and that you have to kind of look at your film and see where you want it in terms of that. Everybody talks about it in terms of Sundance, and last year I was there with SixDegrees, using the media coverage - the media zoo that it's become - to launch something that was not a film but more of a product. It happens to be a charitable product, but it is still a product that's being launched based on the fact all this media was there.

I think that these things are cyclical and that there also are a lot of great films that are coming out of, and that will continue to come out of, film festivals. I don't think that's gonna change - there needs to be places where people can launch independent films. Otherwise, you're out on a Friday with a $50,000 ad and a wish and a prayer, and it's kinda tough. There's gonna be a lot of good films that are gonna be made and won't be seen, and you have to at least try to work the festival thing so you can get them out there.

MPM: "Mixed Breed," your production company - why that name?
Bacon: Oh, gosh. It's a really old name, and it's basically kind of the idea of just being a mutt, that there's nothing purebred or thoroughbred about the company...and the fact that the dogs that I've had have all been mutts. -MPM

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Rather than offering you my words and impressions from this important festival, I've persuaded some of the filmmakers to share their impressions and the stories behind the films they've brought here.

Click HERE for MPM's full menu of TIFF 2007 filmmaker articles and movie reviews.

And click HERE to see me on Reelzchannel's "Reelz in the Round" with BBC radio and Sky TV's Gayl Murphy talking about ... well, check it out.

July 30, 2007, now marks the passing of two of movie's masters. Michelangelo Antonioni, the magician who brought us the long take and Monica Vitti, was 94.

While there is no doubt that Blow-Up (starring David Hemmings, Vanessa Redgrave and Sarah Miles) marked Antonioni's most well-known (and possibly bravest) adventure, it is perhaps only that Blow-Up, for all its peculiarities, was the most accessible. Ingmar Bergman, who shared Antonioni's death, once remarked that Antonioni's Il Notte was notable for introducing Bergman to a young Jeanne Moreau. Bergman, however, had also remarked that he found it hard to understand why Antonioni was lauded and applauded. While they are often compared to each other for the feelings they managed to elicit from their audiences, it may be said that, whereas Bergman's flowing poetry belonged in a series of images, whether sauntering, soaring or spiraling, Antonioni's poetry came predominantly in the still moments, in the quiet. Bathtub scenes where the camera remained fixed for ten-minute takes were not uncommon in Antonioni's onscreen world, and his films — especially L'Avventura — bounced with the seasons from being jeered to praised to hailed to ignored and finally acclaimed, or, rather, appreciated.

    

Regardless of reservations as to whether it was Antonioni or Fellini who remained Italy's greatest, Antonioni's work was richly rewarded: Il Deserto Rosso received Venice's Golden Lion, Il Notte brought with it Berlin's Golden Bear, L'Avventura took Cannes's Jury Prize and Blow-Up Cannes's Palme d'Or. After Antonioni suffered his stroke in 1985, career accolades poured in from around the globe, culminating in the 1995 Oscar presented to him by Jack Nicholson, who starred in the helmer's 1975 film The Passenger (which, in France, went by the title Profession: Reporter). The maestro continued to work with the assistance of others (Wim Wenders, Steven Soderbergh, Wong Kar Wai), but his productivity had slowed to a crawl.

Antonioni claimed his filming style was never burdened by over-consideration, that his ability was instinctive. In that sense, there is no doubt that this 94-year-old could always be considered a modernist.

There is a great sense of sentiment in the cinema for those classics of the '60s and '70s that bestowed upon film an entitlement to not only entertain but to provoke. For all his under-consideration, Antonioni gave us much to consider indeed.