"We live in a society that compels us to go on using these concepts, and we no longer know what they mean"
About this Quote
Antonioni is pointing a camera at language itself and finding it out of focus. The sting in his line is the word "compels": these "concepts" aren’t chosen; they’re mandated, like dress codes for the mind. We keep repeating the approved vocabulary of modern life - love, progress, freedom, success, authenticity - not because it clarifies our experience, but because social life requires the performance of clarity. You have to say the words to remain legible to other people, even when the words have been hollowed out.
That pressure sits at the core of Antonioni’s cinema, especially his 1960s trilogy (L’Avventura, La Notte, L’Eclisse): elegant characters moving through sleek spaces, talking constantly, failing to connect. His films don’t argue that communication is impossible; they suggest communication has been standardized. When everyone is fluent in the same concepts, meaning becomes a kind of corporate wallpaper: soothing, omnipresent, and oddly blank.
The subtext is less nostalgic than diagnostic. Antonioni isn’t longing for some pure past when words meant what they said; he’s exposing how modernity produces a surplus of signifiers and a deficit of shared feeling. "We no longer know what they mean" isn’t ignorance so much as erosion - the slow wearing-down of terms by overuse, media repetition, and institutional convenience. His intent is to make that erosion visible, to force viewers (and citizens) into the uncomfortable work of re-meaning: either recover the concepts, or admit they’ve become props.
That pressure sits at the core of Antonioni’s cinema, especially his 1960s trilogy (L’Avventura, La Notte, L’Eclisse): elegant characters moving through sleek spaces, talking constantly, failing to connect. His films don’t argue that communication is impossible; they suggest communication has been standardized. When everyone is fluent in the same concepts, meaning becomes a kind of corporate wallpaper: soothing, omnipresent, and oddly blank.
The subtext is less nostalgic than diagnostic. Antonioni isn’t longing for some pure past when words meant what they said; he’s exposing how modernity produces a surplus of signifiers and a deficit of shared feeling. "We no longer know what they mean" isn’t ignorance so much as erosion - the slow wearing-down of terms by overuse, media repetition, and institutional convenience. His intent is to make that erosion visible, to force viewers (and citizens) into the uncomfortable work of re-meaning: either recover the concepts, or admit they’ve become props.
Quote Details
| Topic | Truth |
|---|
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