Michelangelo Antonioni's La Notte is the quintessential art film that modern audiences love to hate for its lack of entertainment value, its inability to keep the viewers' attention, and its ineffable "meaning." The barebones plot follows a married couple (Mastoianni and Moreau) as they discover that they've fallen out of love after a party where they each become involved with someone else. It is the second film in an informal trilogy on the inability of couples and lovers to communicate with each other. And yet there is nothing but silence and banal dialogue nobody cares about, not even the characters. The silence isn't interesting or exciting either--it's just boring. There are inexplicable scenes, there are stilted performances, and there are about 110 minutes that could have been cut out of the 120 minute runtime.The movie was, in fact, so boring that we took 10 minute breaks and missed nothing. On those breaks, we read cell phone reviews, did crosswords, and caught M&M's in our mouths. (In case you're curious, I caught 17 out of 20 self-thrown M&M's and also caught M&M's thrown from about 15 feet away. Do you see how this is already more fascinating than the content of the movie?) The reason this isn't a one-star movie, which it was very close to being, is that it actually had some pretty interesting thematic threads. Other than that, nothing really stands out about this movie in a positive way. If you're looking for a good Antonioni movie to see, check out Blow-Up. Forget about this one.
IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054130/
