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 lense 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…

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…

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…

"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…

Como você registra o pensamento revolucionário? Você não registra. Você faz Zabriskie Point.

O filme de Michelangelo Antonioni vai muito além da utilização do cinema como instrumento político ou veículo de debate. Seria muito natural para um cineasta de tendências esquerdistas ligar a câmera e capturar ou encenar discussões filosóficas ou sociológicas numa época em que o mundo, nos mais variados lugares e com as mais variadas pessoas, cobrava transformação. Mas a Antonioni não interessava registrar a revolução. Zabriskie Pont é, em si, a revolução.

Se a primeira cena mostra o debate entre jovens universitários que planejam paralisar o funcionamento de uma faculdade, esta mesma cena termina com um personagem, que mais tarde veríamos se tratar do protagonista do filme,…

Disenchanted youth in revolt. The counterculture. A revolution. Social and political upheaval. Racial tension. Corporate America. The banality of existence. Escape From the city. The open road. The endless sky. Freedom. Ephemeral love. Meaningless death. Mourning. Catharsis. Moving on.

This one is very divisive, some claim it to be Antonioni's biggest failure, others regard it as one of his best. If you allow the film to play out as an experience, a journey of sorts through a particular time and place in recent history rather than expecting too much of it then the reward is much greater.

Very few other filmmakers have been able to say so much with so little. The plot is little more than a few loose…

O início do filme me assustou um pouco. A ideia de ver Antonioni fazendo algo apoiado em diálogos aparentemente didáticos (mesmo que tivessem ótimo conteúdo) me fez torcer o nariz. Não demorou, entretanto, para Zabriskie Point apresentar as principais características do diretor, mescladas com um olhar de sonhos acerca de arquétipos americanos.

Mesmo com um estilo reconhecível de outras obras, não busca ser realista ou qualquer coisa próxima disso. A sequência nas montanhas é uma espécie de milagre. A fuga, o encontro perfeito. O texto é puro e emocionante, mas nem precisaria dele para que aquele fosse um dos momentos mais lindos que já vi em um filme.

De repente, a discussão do começo de Zabriskie Point passa a fazer…