AWR- Blow-Up

Although Julio Cortazar and Michelangelo Antonioni have a different plot in their respective versions of Blow-Up, both the story and the movie concentrate on similar magical realistic devices. Cortazar and Antonioni emphasize concepts such as the nature of reality, parallel worlds, and cyclical time in order to exemplify magical realism. The main similarity between the protagonist in both the movie and the story is the how the photographer is able to go into a deep analysis of why he sees things the way that he does. When he was taking pictures in the park of the man and woman, he continuously kept coming up with imaginary scenarios based off of their slightest actions. The photographer has a keen eye scenes that are picturesque. Even though he may not fully understand the true meaning of something that he is taking a picture of, he uses his imagination in order to come up with his own explanation. Because of this ability of the photographer to see beyond what is solely in front of him, the idea of parallel worlds is displayed. The best example of this is the people with the white faces in the movie who randomly are shown. These people are constantly running around in the movie doing random things, and when the photographer runs into them, he tries to interpret what these people are really doing. After watching these people play imaginary tennis at the end of the movie for a little while, he was eventually able to see them playing real tennis after using his imagination. The idea of using one's imagination to see a parallel world is big in Blow-Up. Although cyclical time isn't the biggest concept in Blow-Up, it is most certainly present. The entire story/movie is quite repetitive, as all the photographer does is go from scene to scene, taking pictures of whatever he desires. There is no huge plot that unravels as the movie progresses, it just repeats itself. Antonioni incorporates cyclical time to show how there is no boundary between the past and present when it comes to one's imagination.