Why Michelangelo Antonioni painted trees grey to capture the anxiety of the modern world

Entertainment · Published 3 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: In his 1964 masterpiece Red Desert, director Michelangelo Antonioni treated the screen like a canvas, even painting nature to match his industrial vision. This psychological drama explores a woman struggling to adapt to a changing environment, using color and sound to mirror the internal isolation of the human experience.

Red Desert follows Giuliana, a woman reeling from an automobile accident, as she navigates a landscape dominated by the petrochemical plants of 1960s Ravenna. The film, which earned the top prize at the 25th Venice International Film Festival, serves as a study in alienation. Rather than a simple critique of industry, Antonioni intended to translate the poetry of the modern world, arguing that factories possess a beauty rivaling that of trees. The core conflict is not man versus machine, but the struggle to adjust to a rapidly evolving reality.

To achieve his vision, Antonioni manipulated his environment with painterly precision. He famously had grass and trees painted grey or white to harmonize with the industrial surroundings, creating a visual language of anxiety. This was his first foray into color, and he utilized it to invent new relationships between hues rather than merely capturing natural tones. His innovative use of telephoto and zoom lenses flattened the image, pinning characters against walls and structures to heighten the sense of psychological entrapment.

The film remains a point of contention among masters of cinema. While Akira Kurosawa counted it among his favorites, praising its atmosphere, Andrei Tarkovsky argued that the focus on pictorial aesthetics hindered the director's narrative strength. Critics like Richard Brody have noted that the characters often appear thin because the environment is so thickly developed, suggesting that the world surrounding them is an inextricable part of their identity. Ultimately, the film captures a profound sense of separation, as Giuliana concludes that despite our proximity to one another, we remain fundamentally alone.

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