Really, what was the point? The two protagonists are unlikeable, the story line weak and convoluted, the dialogue inane,
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PsychoDingo — 11 years ago(August 07, 2014 08:55 PM)
the aerial shots of Los Angeles are cool
the whole scene at the Zabriskie Point turnout and riverbed is fantastic
the major atmospheric shifts throughout the film, though particularly during the ending sequence, are excellent
Surreal Cinema:
http://www.imdb.com/list/ls006574276/ -
franzkabuki — 16 years ago(April 22, 2009 03:47 PM)
The film takes a nose dive from the moment the dude flees L.A. and never fully recovers although somewhat regains its footing after hes shot dead - and the final explosion sequence is quite a marvel in itself. Up until the take-off it was masterfully shot, atmospheric stuff - although not very subtle with its implications. Not a total waste but an something of a failure nevertheless.
"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan -
CitrusWithFuschiaTrim — 16 years ago(May 27, 2009 05:41 AM)
Does IMDB have a roster of volunteers to provide the obligatory "the protagonists are unlikeable, therefore this is bad" argument on each and every film, or what? I seem to read this literally every time step into this domain.
I suppose on a clear day you can see the class struggle from here.
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peterrichard30 — 16 years ago(December 02, 2009 12:01 PM)
The two protagonists are two of the most likeable characters ever in film history compared to the 'boss' character who lives only for money. The very ordinariness of them is what is meant to be attractive, they are just ordinary people trying to live a freer life. They are not meant to be clever people, they are ordinary people. And the ending is for those who have imagination and are willing to think there can be a different way to live. The ending is more powerful than the end to Blowup and is just more ambitious.
And for those who say this film is just trying to be be hip, have a look at Blowup. Although that is quite a good film it obviously tries to be far more hip than this film because of some of the actors featured, the use of the Yardbirds gig within the film etc. -
Quanfa — 16 years ago(January 11, 2010 07:46 AM)
I think Blowup was ultimately more fun than Zabriskie Point, but as hippie movies go, I liked Zabriskie Point. I don't look for too much relevance in hippie movies because I don't see much relevance in hippies - and yes, I think the movie depicted hippies for what many of them are - self-righteous know-it-alls that don't know squat about the world. But maybe that's the point of youth, so it's hard to take it very seriously.
I watched this because of the soundtrack. The other pink floyd hippie movies More and Obscured by Clouds had very similar pretension, but the music helps make them forgivable time capsules.
The only thing I think was badly done was the ending and the timing of the music. "Careful with that Axe, Eugene" has that great intro before leading into the chaotic scream ending - why didn't the beginning of the song build up with the girl walking out of the building calmly and looking back, then climax with the screaming in the song at the first point of explosion. Instead the building already blew up 20 times before we get the climax of the song. Wasted opportunity. I knew the ending was an exploded house synched with Careful with that Axe Eugene and I couldn't wait to see how it came out, but was very disappointed. -
dragmio — 16 years ago(March 20, 2010 03:19 PM)
The two protagonists are unlikeable, the story line weak and convoluted, the dialogue inane
And it was made because of everything else that makes a film. But most of all because of cinematography and film directing.
If you want pretty people, buy a Vogue. If you want a story read a book. If you want dialogues, go see a play.
But only in cinema you have cinematography and film direction. And it's hard to think where any of those it's better accomplished than in this film. -
maz89 — 13 years ago(August 17, 2012 05:27 PM)
But only in cinema you have cinematography and film direction. And it's hard to think where any of those it's better accomplished than in this film.
It's hard to be too concerned about the gorgeous cinematography when much of the film does feature inane dialogue and wooden protagonists. If these elements are not enhancing the visuals, then they're weighing them down.
Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose. -
feodoric — 11 years ago(August 27, 2014 11:12 AM)
Zabriskie Point
? Gee, it was foreign even to Antonioni himself! And although set in California in full student protest hoopla times, the movie was anything but Hollywoodian. ZP was so anti-American, in fact, that due to fears that a movie director with the growing stature such as Antonioni was thought to cast a dangerously political dark shadow on the US. A movie targeted at everything that was making the USA so powerful, such an ominous presence everywhere in the world. Quite bizarrely, Antonioni (who had been enraptured by the whole booming London rock scene he had befriended for his previous movie, was now obsessed by calling
that
next movie
Blowup
instead. However, one afternoon, the big chunk of Nepalese hash that the crew had brought to Death Valley - to withstand the intense heat and boredom - had finally been completely used up by the hippie commune already gathered there for a complex desert orgy scene, he realized he had already used the title himself just a couple of years ago.
"Shoot!", said he, in a moment of Italian anger directed at the whole USA. Quite funnily, the film crew took his words literally then, and shot whatever Antonioni was pointing at, i.e. randomly in front of him, where the hippies in full epidermal costume were getting aroused from the massive THC load now rushing into every cell of their naked bodies. This resulted in one of the most baffling, bizarre, chaotic, non-erotic orgy scene of the whole history of cinema (excluding porn, which usually makes everything very clear about such scenes.
But the critics saw nothing wrong with it. And it remains to this day as foreign as a Martians pussy to everybody, including (or especially) to Antonionis fellow country(wo)men.
And dont worry if the word foreign still comes to mind irresistibly and still sounds terribly appropriate after viewing ZP for the fiftieth time. This is the kind of movie that grows on you if and when you watch it repeatedly. It grows on you like couch grass, that is.
I rarely come to terms with a movie by ending up standing against a strong critical appreciative current. I usually come to realize having missed some important angle that provides a key to understand and make sense of everything. Or succeeding in getting it through repeated exposure, by a kind of mental capillarity, like a piece of paper inserted under a plant leaf in a tightly bound herbarium becomes all soaked up from the leafs watery content.
But ZP is no Last Year in Marienbad ! I too was, for a little while, pretending that I had understood ZP and that I truly, consciously and honestly, liked watching the movie as though it had actual content for approx. 2 hours. I, too, was trying to self-justify my interest in the movie by dwelling on this or that panning shot, on the intrinsic beauty of the cinematographic material to behold in a dark room. Instead of seeing that I was only counting down the minutes before the orgy scene. which unfortunately, had really nothing truly erotic (which would have constituted an actual, true motive for confessing a personal interest). Thus, not even the beauty of the images - which is in itself a strong motive for watching most of Antonionis movies of the 60s was sufficient to drive a sustained interest of mine in the movie.
ZP is a nice shell whose inside is so empty that, having been opened for a while under the scorching heat and hot winds in the Death Valley, its internal wooden surface was bleached out completely and shone as brightly and beautifully as its exterior. A very nice shiny object, somewhat subversive at first for a short while, but that becomes rather harmless, nondescript, and finally . bland as a sun- and wind-bleached shiny object found in the Death Valley. Even its political discourse is so tame in the end, by want of demonstrable purpose perhaps. or because of Hollywood- or even Washington-originating pressure to tone down its originally blatant anti-American message(s). Antonioni was indeed harassed by political agents or forces during the shooting of ZP, which may have killed what the director had in mind.
If ZP was indeed transmogrified to such an extent because of political ideas that Antonioni wanted to convey with it, one must say that the film was de facto killed in the process, because what apparently remains of its message is so adulterated (or adult-rated?
that it verges on being a sheer chaos of well-polished images that rapidly lose their appeal as the movie progresses to its never-ending point, like a painter trying to capture the vanishing point of a scene depicting eternity.
I wanted to like ZP. After all, it ends up already gathering positive points for its progressive and folk rock soundtrack and for the aesthetic values of its main actors and actresses . well before they utter any sound, whereby movie loses a point or two at least. Innocence, purity and earnestness are nice things to capture on film. However, these qualities, which Mark Frechette and Daria Halprin co -
Xeokym — 11 years ago(November 13, 2014 04:54 AM)
Wow, that is some post. I agree with most of what you said. I like a lot of Antonioni movies &
Blow-Up
is one of my favorite movies, but ZP just seemed like a total train wreck to me. I love movies that take place in stark locations but by the end of ZP I had to admit to myself that the whole thing seemed like a pretentious stab at America. It had some interesting symbolism that made me think, but that hardly save it. And no matter how slick the cinematography was, the bottom line is the actors suck because they weren't even actors to begin with, the dialogue is trite, and as others have pointed out, the orgy is one of the most un-erotic sexual encounters I have ever seen.
Nobody's perfecteveryone who is creative in some way eventually does a stinker. ZP is Antonioni's stinker.
I can't understand your crazy moon language. -
maz89 — 13 years ago(August 17, 2012 05:25 PM)
I'm going to chalk this one off as a (somewhat interesting) failure. It definitely had potential but its flaws weighed it down considerably: the awful script (which featured some of the worst dialogue to ever make it in Antonioni's cinema), the sub-par acting, and most importantly, the centerpiece romance which felt contrived and forced (therefore stripping that woman's grieving process - no pun intended - in the end of its emotional power).
There were some great moments, however, and they were the ones which were not sabotaged by poor writing or acting basically, the moments where Antonioni's spellbinding cinematography took over the storytelling. The plane whooshing up and down (and I don't think the film really gets to "breathe" until the man gets on the plane). The woman driving on the highway. Zabriskie Point itself (excluding that sex-cum-orgy scene, which felt like a failed experiment more than anything else). That climax, definitely.
Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose. -
JellyFish19 — 11 years ago(May 03, 2014 04:08 PM)
It's the only work by Antonioni that I saw, I'm sure I'll be seeing some more soon. I really enjoyed this film, like most movies set in isolated locations in general. Sure, the plot is basically non-existent and it's just covered in symbolism about the 60s counterculture, however I'm really interested in that time period.
The explosion at the end was the only thing I found silly, just because it reminded me too much of that family guy clip - -
kenny-164 — 11 years ago(July 11, 2014 11:19 AM)
Why was this film made? I am not sure whether Antonioni himself ever spoke to the subject, but I would have to guess he was intrigued by the social doings in America at the time, as in Blow-up he was with that period of Swinging London, and I would guess gravitated to LA first and the wider southwest due to the presence of Hollywood. After all as a practical matter he recruited much of his cast there, and I would guess much of his technical help as well. A very practical consideration, in short.
As for WHAT the film was intended to be about, certainly one recurring theme from earlier films is man in the landscape, and again the comparison between the low slung but still urban environment of LA and Southern California on one hand and the southwest desert on the other is a recurring element in his films. Think of the Aolian Islands off Sicily compared to the more urban scenes in I think Palermo? in L'Avventura, or the street scenes in Blow-up compared to the Arcadian nature of the park. The industrial settings in Red Desert compared to the scenes shot in the lowlands.
This comparison in Zabriskie Point I think is rather comparatively explicit in showing how different man's existence is, depending on the setting, even while we bring elements of ourselves to both. Daria's sexual involvement with the businessman would have been a very different experience, for him as well, if it had taken place in the same desert setting as did her lovemaking with the younger man.
An example of this sort of difference in existential awareness occurs in L'Eclisse, where Piero, preparing no doubt to make his first real sexual move on Vittoria, seems at first to make an odd choice of taking her to an apartment belonging to his parents, rather than his own. But perhaps he did so subconsciously to make him appear less superficial, as he may have feared he was, in substituting the trappings of his own existence for the rather overt historical references to his family, earlier existence, and social background. This is paralleled in an earlier scene where we see Piero examining Vittoria's bedroom in her mother's apartment, which we compare to her own apartment. What do these places and the things in them show us about the characters?
In Zabriskie, the desert is described as dead, and yet it truly isn't as a factual matter, of course, but also becomes the scene of the couple's lovemaking, Eros prevailing over Thanatos? Perhaps. But only briefly, right? Thanatos soon appears, literally enough as it is.
In short aside from the concededly rather simple plot or narrative, I think the film is an exercise in examining some of Antonioni's perennial themes in a different country and setting.
Needless to say I enjoyed it. -
hockeyhrs — 11 years ago(March 25, 2015 08:28 PM)
I would encourage you to read more on film criticism. Your obsessions with superficially compartmentalized characteristics of a movie such as
"the point" (of the film)
"the like-ability of protagonists"
"the story line"
"the dialogue"
"the ending"
"motivations" (What did her boss do to deserve* . . .)
seem rather facile.
You: "Were the '60s really such a pseudo-intellectual, pathetic era?"
Me: "Compared to what (other era you've experienced that wasn't pseudo-intellectual/pathetic)?"- as if the universe doles out rewards & punishments according to merit