![]() But what people fail to notice during this scene, is that she is in fact watching the past. What occurs next is an instant of spontaneous elation and giddy happiness, as she watches the road rush away behind them. He tells her to turn her back to the front of the car. In what is perhaps the film's most joyous moment, a female character asks Locke what he's running from. Beyond this, though, he wants to stay blank. Like his character in "Five Easy Pieces", he wants some unmappable freedom. Nicholson's character is desperate to escape this. The film's original title, "Profession: Reporter", highlights this point best. That everyone conforms to specific cultural archetypes. While responding to a comment that all PLACES are the same, he even argues that it's actually the PEOPLE that are the same. He is trapped between wanting to be free and having to fulfil duties/roles/tasks embedded in the new persona he has acquired. ![]() In Antonioni's film, Nicholson articulates these ideas himself. It is from this presumption of a free, self authored mind, combined with a sense of rigid human nature, that the Lockean doctrine of "natural" rights is derived. Firstly the belief that the individual was free to author his own life, and secondly the belief that human nature is rigid and unchangeable. Each individual was free to define his character, but his basic identity as a member of the human species could not be altered. Throughout his writings, Locke emphasised the individual's freedom to author his or her own soul. He believed that it was our experiences that defined us as people and that the only way to escape who we are is to effectively erase our history and cut ourselves off from experiences. Locke believed in the concept of the "tabula rasa" or blank slate. The theme of identity, and Locke's name itself, immediately recalls the writings of English philosopher John Locke. He's flying, finally enjoying a brief moment of freedom. Later in the film, as he rides a cable cart, Locke spreads his arms and soars like a bird. "I'd like to enquire about flights," Locke asks a hotel clerk. Unhappy with his life, he discovers the corpse of a fellow hotel guest and promptly decides to take on the guy's identity. He is alone in the wilderness, lost and frustrated. We join David Locke (Jack Nicholson) at a particularly low point in his life.
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