The Passenger

I watched Anonioni's film "The Passenger" again last night. It's probably the tenth time I have seen it and I still see it like a new film every time. This film poetically and cerebrally reinforces the idea that you can't change who you are in life. Not that your destiny is fixed, but that your 'identity' is. That there is no escaping who you are. It makes a powerful statement about this idea through Jack Nicholson's portrayal of a journalist who has become trapped in his own identity unable to really say anything meaningful anymore, even though he has a privileged career and a strong reputation. Even though he knows the truth about the war he is reporting on in Congo, he is unable to report it how it really is. By chance he is offered a way out, when a man dies in an adjacent hotel room. He fakes his own death and takes on the identity of the man who has died. What follows is his inability to escape his own identity, as well as his now assumed identity which slowly also becomes a burden from which he also needs to escape....