Zabriskie Point (1970)

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

Reading reviews here and elsewhere this film divides people. Some want a more materialistic world with more machines more toys more matter; Others prefer a more spiritual beauty-inflected reality.This film is beautiful in so many ways: Frechette and Daria are beautiful. Their attitudes are beautiful. The desert and cacti are beautiful. Corporate and its armed wings' America are not. Nature is beautiful here. Man-made realities; those huge roads crisscrossing each other are not. There is a constant dance between the two; a refusal to accept the other side of the equation. Antonioni had made Blow-up 4 years prior and this too is a masterpiece of disconnection from the world we have created. In that way both those films encapsulate the 60-70s countercultural spirit. Also watch More and La Vallée - Obscured by Clouds both directed by Barbet Schroeder and containing a Pink Floyd soundtrack too; the 3 films which have PF soundtrack are all paeans to counter-cultural values; the aural layer to those filmic works supporting and reinforcing them.Zabriskie Point is a highly meaningful film and the values therein are as relevant in 2018 as they were in 1970: Nature and Man; the Older and The Young; rebellion against the mechanistic age; playfulness and youth; the Gaian Rape as perpetrated by greedy men; the struggle between the ones who accept The Machine and its edicts and the Ones who do not.It is a classic today and will likely remain so.

Michael Medved had Zabriskie Point down on his list of 100 worst films. But just looking on the critical reaction here there's a lot who feel he was harsh. I'm not one of them however though I've seen much worse.The main problem here is that Michelangelo Antonini chose a pair of non actors for his two young leads, symbols as they were of a new generation that was to reform all before it. The problem is that for long periods of this film Mark Frechette and Daria Halprin are on screen together. Put it simply, they couldn't act. I've seen better from high school plays.Zabriskie Point is a waste of time for people like Rod Taylor, G.D. Spradlin, and Paul Fix they've all been far better. Zabriskie Point should be seen as a reminder that even big budget films can have a dearth of acting.

Plot and story line straight of the late sixties: It didn't make any sense. Interesting story about the "Youth Revolution", with the lens of 47 years makes the film all that more interesting. Great photography, nice shots of the USC Campus of the 1960s and I think UCLA. Most unbelievable part of the story was the lovemaking in the gypsum sands. Been to this part of the Mojave/Death Valley and got to say the skin of the hippies must have been monumentally dry. Just watch in this movie my skin dried out. Really on a good day that place is drier than you can imagine. Barefeet on that gypsum stuff, they must have had to moisturize for decades to get over coming in contact with it.Best part was the music, which has tracks by Pink Floyd I bet you never hear.The lead make actor Mark Frechette was killed in prison when a 150 pound weight fell on him. This was his only acting job of importance.Scenes have people that suddenly appear and disappear, which was a bit odd. Worth the watch.

Michelangelo Antonioni's American film has become a classic study of alienated youth despite the fact that it's not really a very good movie. It's muddled, poorly acted and awkwardly paced. It's challenging to be sure but there are also a lot of in-your-face imagery (endless signs of the consumerism the US embraces, police shooting AT rioting students) that help to form Antonioni's decidedly anti-American slant. Casting non-actors in the leads doesn't help. Combined, Daria Halprin & Mark Frechette have the charisma of a rock. Following two story lines (one involving Frechette and student revolutionaries, the other involving Haplprin and her boss/lover Rod Taylor) that lead to a highly explosive ending, the film is a beautifully photographed bore. It's dull rather than compelling. The rock songs that pepper the film (by the likes of Pink Floyd, The Rolling Stones and The Grateful Dead) add little. The screenplay was worked by Antonioni and Tonino Guerra along with Fred Gardner, Sam Shepard and Clare Peploe, but there's really very little here. As Frechette says early on in the film, "I'm willing to die...but not from boredom." If you feel that way, stay away from this one.