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L’avventura is one of those films that I never found immediately striking and yet has stayed with me in the back of my mind for years. Its story and characters are subtle while the settings and imagery create a haunting sense of isolation.

The film begins with a young woman, Anna, who is troubled by her relationship. She has not seen her lover Sandro for a long time but is going with her best friend Claudia to meet up with him. The three then join a group for a cruise around the sea.

The crew stops at an island for sight seeing and a swim. On the rocky shore, Anna tells Sandro she wishes to be alone. He believes she is just nervous because it has been so long and that those feelings will pass. After a brief argument, Sandro reclines for some sun bathing and Anna is never seen again. For the rest of the film, she is simply gone.

The group searches the island and nearby waters for Anna. Did she have an accident and drown in the sea? Was she kidnapped or did she go willingly on a passing boat? There conversations about smugglers and sightings and shots of waves crashing over rocks and into caves but the mystery is never resolved.

What stands out to me in this film is how environment, framing and gesture tell the story and convey feeling. The desolate, uninhabitable island and the mysterious sea that surrounds it make the humans that search over it look small and fragile. Claudia and Sandro cling together in Anna’s absence.

Very little time passes before Sandro attempts to form a romance with Claudia. At first she denies him and insists that they part ways. Whether Anna be freshly dead or freshly disappeared, taking up with her boyfriend seems mighty distasteful. And yet, Claudia eventually gives in to Sandro’s persistence. They go through the film searching for Anna together while the complications of actually finding her come linger over head.

The characters are primarily wealthy and seen in settings of leisure. They hedonists without a sense of purpose, occupied with social events and romantic flings. In Antonioni’s Cannes Statement, he discusses the behaviors of the characters as symptoms of a greater illness:

“The tragedy in L’Avventura stems directly from an erotic impulse of this type: unhappy, miserable, futile. To be critically aware of the vulgarity and the futility of such an overwhelming erotic impulse, as is the case with the protagonist in L’Avventura, is not enough or serves no purpose. And here we witness the crumbling of a myth, which proclaims it is enough for us to know, to be critically conscious of ourselves, to analyze ourselves, in all our complexities and in every facet of our personality. The fact that matters is that such an examination is not enough. It is only a preliminary step.”

Antonioni writes with reverence of the Renaissance man while his characters are never seen working or discussing creation. They seem to float along with only their own pleasure in mind. What is the result of the pursuit of “happiness”? A lot of sadness.

In a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, Shirley Wang writes “Some researchers say happiness as people usually think of it—the experience of pleasure or positive feelings—is far less important to physical health than the type of well-being that comes from engaging in meaningful activity…Some of the newest evidence suggests that people who focus on living with a sense of purpose as they age are more likely to remain cognitively intact, have better mental health and even live longer than people who focus on achieving feelings of happiness.
In fact, in some cases, too much focus on feeling happy can actually lead to feeling less happy, researchers say.”

Claudia seems to be the only one aware or hesitant about this empty way of life. Something about her character separates her, if only slightly, from the rest. She can’t relate to and seems judgmental at times about the infidelities and false games of her friends.

In the final moments, Claudia goes searching for Sandro after he never comes back to their room. She worries that Anna has returned but she simply finds him with a no-name girl from a party. Sandro and Claudia look heartbroken as she runs away from the scene in tears. He follows her, like a regretful child who has disappointed his mother. He sits on a bench, sulking, and she approaches.  Standing tall behind him, looking out onto a mountain in the distance, her hand hesitates and then tenderly touches his head.

“Every day, every emotional encounter gives rise to a new adventure.”

—

This film is widely seen as boring, slow and ironically named as very little happens. I can’t help but wonder why a film that I’ve never considered a favorite has influenced me so much as to inspire the name of this blog. There is something very beautiful about the word, phoenetically as well as the ideas behind it. There are many messages that could be interpreted from the film but upon my most recent viewing and the setting I’m in now in, I take it as a call to purpose, to creating, and to contributing positively.

A little block of foam sat around my house for 2 months. It had a bit of a history. It was once a part of a surfboard that at the end of its life, it was stripped of its glass and dissected into small chunks. One piece was given to my friend Alex Davis, who then gave it to me. I had asked him to make me a hand plane just before he moved away but running low on time, he gave me the blank instead.

An interest in hand planes has spiked recently along with all other obscure surf craft. To me, they seemed pretty silly at first — a strange link between body boards and body surfing. After trying a few out on different occasions, my appreciation for their characteristics grew. It’s amazing how a little piece of wood, foam or even a frisbee can add just a little more speed and change the feeling of a ride.

Not having the all of the supplies or tools myself to complete this project, I waited until I took a trip to my hometown to shape the little plane. My old boss and mentor Dennis Litchfield let me take over his shaping bay, gave me a few pointers and let me go at it with the foam. It’s amazing how quickly vision and touch attune themselves to symmetry and subtle cures. Even on such a small scale, shaping the hand plane taught me a lot about standard surfboard construction. I certainly gained more respect for the artists in that field. The next day, Dennis helped me with the glassing, making sure I didn’t start any fires or weld my fingers to popsicle sticks.

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