Download (12MB) - University of Salford Institutional Repository

introduces an image of Kit and Tunner in medium shot, as they emerge from nowhere and
pause to contemplate the deserted place. When Port appears, Bertolucci reframes the scene
from a distance to capture his movement. This longer shot is taken on an empty quayside
which features a gigantic, rusting crane, evoking a past of industrial enterprise. There is no
other human presence and no sound but their voices. Deleuze discusses film sequences in
which characters 'literally emerge from time rather than coming from another place',
(Deleuze, 1989: 39) and this observation is relevant here. Two long journeys made across the
country's arid terrain, by train and car, are also fragmented by montage and by restricted
camera views, thereby increasing the abstractness of the spatial reference and also the sense
of temporal indefiniteness. Similarly, the long duration of the Tuareg journey is constructed
through the simple alternation of night and day images. With this kind of editing and nuanced
narrative structure, Bertolucci constructs a suppressive narration which inhibits viewer
engagement with the characters, and this viewer passivity is accentuated by not disclosing
information about the motivations behind the protagonists' conduct (the reasons for the
couple's unsatisfactory marriage, the thoughts driving Kit to abandon her husband's body).
Representations of the sublime and its emotional impact
The desert is the most significant reference point for the film*s representation of time, and it
also serves to divide the narrative into two parts on account of the different aesthetic
meanings conferred upon it by Bertolucci. In the first part of the film, the desert is used to
evoke a sense of the sublime. Viewers are guided to this experience through the framings of
Port's intense facial expressions and bodily postures that relay the impact of experiencing a
different temporal effect. This novel sense of time triggers thoughts of mortality -
substantially suppressed by Western culture - which make Port realize that he has lost
direction in his life and it also facilitates the re-emergence of sentiment towards Kit. The
narrative culmination of this discovery is reached when Port takes Kit out into the desert,
246