Zabriskie Point (A-)

Zabriskie Point was directed Michelangelo Antonioni and released in 1970. It is a depiction of student radicalism, free love, and personal freedom of thought and action in late 1960's southern California.

Many people will find this movie almost unwatchable. The "plot" is the story of two young and uninhibited youth on a journey without direction through the desert of a society of confining social norms characterized by a sterilized commercialism. It encompasses scenes of anti-war protest, quasi-revolutionary activity, hostility to authority for its own sake, and hippie free-love. This is juxtaposed with mainstream culture depicted as impotent, blandly capitalistic, and essentially without a soul.

The most striking feature of Zabriskie Point is the apparent ineptness of the acting and writing. The writing (Antonioni, Sam Shepard, Franco Rossetti, Tonino Guerra, Clare Peploe) consists of the most cliched hippie speak imaginable, as dry throughout the film as the desert in which most of the movie takes place. Antonioni uses amateurs and non-actors - and it shows. I hesitate to say that even the direction of the renowned Antonioni leaves something to be desired, at least on the surface.

On further contemplation, I believe it is not that simple. I believe, rather firmly, that the direction is in fact deliberately lacking. In fact the previous sentence is the greatest thing I take away from Zabriskie Point. It is a film about not only lack of direction, but the actual rejection of direction as a life virtue. It is a film about characters who have or are discovering that they can live their lives in a way that rejects plans, goals, and any social norms that they so choose to reject. A film without direction depicting life without direction. That is my take anyway.

The cinematography (Alfio Contini) and production design (Dean Tavoularis) is immaculate, and bursting with social commentary. Scenes in which students bent on a life of free expression and rejection of the world as it is drive through streets fraught with corporate logos and advertisement. Through model homes and model families the consummate capitalist markets mass housing developments and a cookie-cutter life while an American flag fills the window in his sky-rise office. Other scenes beg for allegory that is better left for the individual to determine for themselves.

The soundtrack for the greatest cinematic depiction of hippie-dome? Jerry Garcia and Pink Floyd of course. Which brings me to the final scenes of the movie, accompanied by the memorable Pink Floyd number "Careful With That Axe, Eugene." Probably the most engrossing, poignant, and impeccably filmed end to a movie that I have ever seen. And I have seen a few. I would not recommend this movie to many, but I would recommend the final ten minutes to everyone.

Zabriskie Point is a social and cultural commentary. There are few scenes that I would call entertaining. I laughed once, barely. This is a work of art that is truly not intended as entertainment. My grade of A- is merely for this fact. Zabriskie Point is a work of transcendent artistic genius.