Who blew up the house?
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fschuster — 18 years ago(December 30, 2007 09:45 PM)
The true purpose of the film to me seems to be to show that the hippies that could really bring effective change were those who made ART and NOT war just like the "pigs". Antonioni's point is not to glorify the student movement or the counterculture as many of you have already deduced, they were quite boring and just as clueless as the "straight" people. The true revolutionaries were those who saw BEYOND that and instead made beautiful art that transcends concept or entertainment and taps into a transcendental humane state of communion and understanding of the world separate from any ideological belief. Antonioni doesn't want you to "get" anything, you're just supposed to "look" at the movie, that's what's it's about, there's barely any dialogue and whatever is there is quite laughable and childish. This is a purely visual, cinematic exprience or expression from the filmmaker that does not only criticize western values (not just american) as a whole, but also the tactics of most of the counterculture's revolutionary upheavals.
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pninson — 17 years ago(April 07, 2008 10:30 PM)
ZP shows an accurate picture of America at the time as seen by Antonioni. Yes, the hippies and the "revolutionaries" didn't overthrow the consumer culture, and in fact were consumed by it. I think that's pointed out in the film. The house explodes and the air is filled with consumer products and then Daria turns and leaves. The house is still there.
Perhaps Antonioni wasn't saying that the hippies would rise and bring freedom to the Earth just that they thought that would happen. This is accurate. I was there, and young and dumb enough to think I had the answers. Now we're the biggest consumers of all.
But it's not as if nothing has changed. In a lot of ways the idealism of the 60s continues, even as the political culture has gone steadily downhill since 1968. Real change takes time.
We report, you decide; but we decide what to report. -
AlbertTheFlasher — 17 years ago(April 27, 2008 11:05 AM)
Comic Book Guy wrote:
"And yet, as history has shown, most of the Baby Boomer generation sold out in the 80's, trading in their VW microbuses for BMW's, their youthful idealism for traditional values and their socialism for captialism."
Here's a perfect example of this. Years ago I was watching a Best Of Phil Donahue clip show and they showed a 1969 clip of Donahue interviewing a typical hippie; he had bushy hair, a bushy mustache and a flowery shirt, if recall correctly, and I believe his name was Jerry. Anyway, he and Donahue started getting into an argument and he was saying something like "Like, hey man, I don't have to be on this plastic talk show with a plastic host like yourself!" Then they showed a 1984 clip of Jerry on the Donahue show again, but this time he had short hair, was clean shaven, and was wearing a business suit. They indicated that Jerry was now a successful stockbroker, and he was giving a speech to the audience on how yesterday's hippies are today's yuppies.
So I guess the attitude of the Baby Boomer generation eventually became "When we were radical youths, we did our best to change the world, had some great ideas, and we made our point. But now the time has come to grow up and face reality, and get on with our lives." -
WarpedRecord — 15 years ago(January 30, 2011 11:51 AM)
That would be Jerry Rubin, and though he sold out in the '80s like so many hippies and yippies did, he died doing the ultimate act of nonconformity: He was hit by a car while jaywalking. Some principles are just not worth fighting for, and some laws are good.
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creaturefeeture — 14 years ago(November 07, 2011 03:41 PM)
I just saw the film as very metaphorical. The explosion was a metaphor for the turmoil inside of her at that moment. She saw how her society valued trivial materialistic things like a plane over a human life, she saw how the people she was working for were selling a way of life that wasn't living, just consuming empty trivial things, and she was enraged.
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daniel_lalla — 9 years ago(November 20, 2016 12:22 PM)
Not so metaphorical - I find it explicitly calls out shallow American society, the destruction of the planet and resources for money, the Vietnam war and counter culture protests. I'm not sure the house blows up. After the music cuts, she calmly drives away and it's silent. I think it's imagined "ideal". And if America doesn't 'get' the film, it makes the point even more. I'd say the election of Trump is just a modern day example of ignorance and American greed, no matter the consequences.
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nextwooden — 14 years ago(December 16, 2011 12:59 AM)
This is who blew up the house:
http://www.imdb.com/board/20566729/
Duh!
"You paid for parking? For me?" -
Red_Barn — 13 years ago(June 16, 2012 02:45 PM)
The hotel/house was full of people wanting to exploit the planet, people who were the symbol of the mindset that puts property as more important than a human life. So in her mind, she blew it up. The film is named after an incredibly beautiful natural place, a place that the people in the hotel want to exploit for money. "They should build a drive-in here".
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jmillerdp — 9 years ago(November 20, 2016 12:54 AM)
To quote Big Jim McBob and Billy Sol Hurok of SCTV's "Farm Film Report and Celebrity Blow Up": "Woooo! That blow'd up good!" "Yeah, blow'd up real good!"
I. Drink. Your. Milkshake! [slurp!] I DRINK IT UP! - Daniel Plainview - There Will Be Blood -
elephuntingun — 9 years ago(November 20, 2016 05:21 PM)
I thought nobody blew up the house.
It looked like she was imagining it.
http://tinyurl.com/9-simple-easy-guacamole-recip