Midnight Movie - Zabriskie Point
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Fri 15 July 2005 // 23:55
(Michelangelo Antonioni / 1970 / USA-Italy / 111mins / Cert 15)
(Fri 15th / 11:55pm / £4/3)
In the late 1960s, buoyed by his phenomenal success as an avant-garde filmmaker in Italy, Michelangelo Antonioni was invited to shoot a feature length film in Hollywood. The result was released in 1970. Zabriskie Point began as a commercial failure and a target of harsh criticism in the United States. At issue was the film’s lack of narrative focus and its verité accounts of the mounting civil unrest on American campuses, all in marked defiance of California boosters who were eager to placate the increasing political tensions that threatened speculative profits. Over time, however, it has come to be seen as one of the defining films of the counter-culture, capturing with halluciogenic precision the wasteland of post-hippy disaffection, and the alienation felt by many at the love generation's failure to change the world.
Plotwise, there isn't much to speak of: at a student demo in California in 1969, mistakenly thinking that his bullet has killed a cop, Mark goes on the run. In the desert he hooks up with Daria, a secretary with a property company. Mark returns to LA in his stolen plane, while a frightened Daria carries on to her meeting with her bosses. However, from the early scenes of violent student protests and the faceless homogenisation of corporate America through to the explosive, iconic finale in the Californian desert, Antonioni's bold
impressionistic images tell a far more important story. In fact, watching the film some 35 years since its first release one thing becomes clear: very little has changed but the soundtrack. Which, by the way, is a searing who's who of psychadelia, featuring original material by Pink Floyd, John Fahey and The Grateful Dead. Far out!
(Fri 15th / 11:55pm / £4/3)
In the late 1960s, buoyed by his phenomenal success as an avant-garde filmmaker in Italy, Michelangelo Antonioni was invited to shoot a feature length film in Hollywood. The result was released in 1970. Zabriskie Point began as a commercial failure and a target of harsh criticism in the United States. At issue was the film’s lack of narrative focus and its verité accounts of the mounting civil unrest on American campuses, all in marked defiance of California boosters who were eager to placate the increasing political tensions that threatened speculative profits. Over time, however, it has come to be seen as one of the defining films of the counter-culture, capturing with halluciogenic precision the wasteland of post-hippy disaffection, and the alienation felt by many at the love generation's failure to change the world.
Plotwise, there isn't much to speak of: at a student demo in California in 1969, mistakenly thinking that his bullet has killed a cop, Mark goes on the run. In the desert he hooks up with Daria, a secretary with a property company. Mark returns to LA in his stolen plane, while a frightened Daria carries on to her meeting with her bosses. However, from the early scenes of violent student protests and the faceless homogenisation of corporate America through to the explosive, iconic finale in the Californian desert, Antonioni's bold
impressionistic images tell a far more important story. In fact, watching the film some 35 years since its first release one thing becomes clear: very little has changed but the soundtrack. Which, by the way, is a searing who's who of psychadelia, featuring original material by Pink Floyd, John Fahey and The Grateful Dead. Far out!