Tragic Hunt

On December 13, 1975, forty-two people departed for a crocodile hunt on the island of Java. Twenty-eight men, fourteen women. They rented two boats and, loaded with provisions, proceeded along a river.

After reaching the place, a pool of water at the foot of a towering and sinister cliff, the crocodiles overturned their boats and they were all eaten, provisions included.

~ Michelangelo Antonioni, That Bowling Alley on the Tiber — Tales of a Director. Translated by William Arrowsmith.

Now there’s an Antonioni film the world wasn’t ready for. If he’d needed a co-director for insurance purposes, a la Wim Wenders, maybe he could have got Lewis Teague. Still, I like the sound of this one, especially the way Antonioni might have done it — all that packing and preparation, five minutes of decisive devouring, and then a long epilogue of red water flowing back to sea…