1970 Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni
An epic portrait of late Sixties America, as seen through the portrayal of two of its children: anthropology student Daria (who's helping a property developer build a village in the Los Angeles desert) and dropout Mark (who's wanted by the authorities for allegedly killing a policeman during a student riot)...
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To get a stronger grasp on this films ideas and intent one must first comprehend this piece of trivia: Michelangelo Antonioni's original ending was a shot of an airplane sky-writing the phrase "Fuck You, America" Venomous though it may be—and it doesn't need that last shot to drive its message home—it's a markedly seductive and inviting rendition of American socio-political structures through the lens of youthful/foreign cynicism, however patent. If the man's language is guns, you talk to him with a gun, so says a miscellaneous hippie. Antonioni's language isn't the type to end with lingering gun smoke, though watching credits roll by isn't far from it. "The audiences won't like it" MGM insisted, well, "That's the same old jive…
With each viewing, its dramatic "weaknesses" recede and its pure cinematic beauty resonates more clearly.
The end of a revolution marked by the victory of corporations. Men in suits drive a car in which the radio reads out the latest number of Americans dead in Vietnam, all while they compare the number of centimillionares in Los Angeles to that of Texas and New York.
A boy and a girl belonging to different worlds find each other on the lonely open road. The desolate desert turns into their fleeting haven; a dusty paradise far away from the troubles of the city where they converse and make love under the boundless sky. But this transient bliss is painfully and abruptly cut short by an ill-advised trip back to civilisation; back to the waiting arms of meaningless demise.…
What Antonioni CAN'T do has always been as mind-blowing as what he can do. See Ingmar Bergman's infamous assessment that Antonioni is an amateur. In this film, Antonioni can't do anything; least of all, film two people talking to each other. Previously he never tried to film a conversation. He makes an honest attempt to do so here, and therein lies the problem: Antonioni doesn't have an honest bone in his body.
We have to have the courage to admit that in the past hundred years all art has been reduced to complaining. An artist is lesser or greater depending on how much he complains. They call it ‘denunciation’. The fact is that it’s complaining, because if it were protest…
Sure, yeah, the leads are terrible and the dialogue betrays the fact that seemingly everyone with a remote connection to the project got a say in it, but this may honestly be, barring some rewatches of Antonioni films I wasn't prepared for at the time, my second favorite of his films after RED DESERT. Alternately wistful and cynical outsider view of America, a place where a hippie can just take a plane and get away with it, until he tries to repent. The callously arranged female models of BLOWUP give way to outright mannequins animated by ad companies who see people only as clotheshorse to prop up their products. Its dream-vision of the States thus ironized, it's nevertheless the most…
While waiting for a friend, I walked in for the final 15 minutes at Metrograph. I don’t even know what the hell else came before it, it could be a white wall for an hour, I would still love the fuck out of it. It’s for LA what Blowup was for London.
it's like a friend showing you a 10 minute youtube clip and he keeps telling you "nah dude trust me it gets good" except this movie's 113 minutes long
#Existential Musings Vol. 4.
#Zabriskie Point
#Antonioni
In a while
I find the time to make the sunshine mine
In a smile
I saw a single eagle in the sky
Wheeling, soaring, gliding by
Pink Floyd, man. The real thing. I mean, those hippie students can shoot their mouths off about strikes and the frickin' cops and Karl Marx and revolutions but it'll all amount to the same thing: what the hell for? The only real shit is Pink Floyd. And this place here. With its rocks and sand and hills and no one around but her. We're like two old prospectors who lost their way I tell her and she looks at me funny. The silence here tops everything,…
"Michelangelo Antonioni's original ending was a shot of an airplane sky-writing the phrase "Fuck You, America," which was cut by MGM president Louis F. Polk along with numerous other scenes. Louis F. Polk was eventually replaced by James T. Aubrey, who had most of the cut footage restored, but without this final shot."
-IMDb Trivia
Antonioni's firstly theoretical and subsequently literal destruction of the "American" Dream and all possible derivative idealizations through an arthouse perspective that is necessarily foreign, ridiculizes the verbose intellectualism of the struggling student movement and shows the inefficiency of the power authorities in charge of society's "control". Zabriskie Point is most appropriately chosen as a deserted land where life is rarely seen, and the auteur's alienation…
acting was giving low budget porno for sure but that languid ten minute long desert orgy scene and the entire final sequence—a cacophony of explosions engulfing the sky in orange flame and sending the most american household items you can think of up in the air like confetti, all set to a dreamy pink floyd song—are worth five stars on their own. michael bay on adderall?
Italian film director Michelangelo Antonioni wields his outsider status to create an impassive commentary on the palpitation of the late sixties and the expiration of the American dream.
The film opens with a student debate, where the students are incapable of raising themselves of their chairs to get energised enough to make their coffee, and the wielding of different art forms conveys many of the films most dominant messages. Mark Frechette plays disillusioned student Mark, who runs off his college campus after an altercation between students and the police results in the fatal shooting of an officer, for which he believes he'll be held accountable. He steals a small aircraft, flies into the desert, and in many ways never comes…
Antonioni, I don't know man. Zabriskie Point is one of Antonioni's later films, and it showcases his portrayal of hippies in America in the 60s, corporate culture, capitalism and all that good stuff.
I really enjoyed the last five minutes of this film, because something actually happened and I connected to the themes in an interesting way. Everything else leading up to those final moments (apart from a very surreal desert scene...) was pretty bland and forgettable. The cinematography is actually quite good, though a lot of the shots are dull and hold little weight. I can't tell you how many shots we get of a car driving or a plane flying. The first few times it might add to…
