Retroblog #2: Zabriskie Point by Antonioni
Michelangelo Antonioni is one of the greatest directors of the 20th century. If you don't know his work you must find it and watch it. I used to manage a video rental place in New Orleans in the mid-90s and I had the chance to watch many films. Antonioni is definitely one of those "intellectual" European directors from the postWWII neorealist period, but his approach to filmmaking is very artistic with camera placement and color and composition in the shot as equally important to the director as the plot. His best film is probably Blow Up with David Hemmings and Vanessa Redgrave, based on a short story by Julio Cortazar, but The Passenger with Jack Nicholson and his early triptych of films with Monica Vitti are well worth watching as well. Monica Vitti is dazzling to watch. You will fall in love. Such star power.. Be sure to check out the youtube video posted above of a documentary on Antonioni based on a Roland Barthe essay. Its a really in depth look at the maestro and his world view.
Zabriskie Point is his American hippie film about California radicals sticking it to the man. The film was panned when it came out, I think Pauline Kael skewered it. But this is not a typical American film. Its a great stoner film too, with extended sequences of an orgy in the desert and of course the famous ending with slow motion explosions set to Pink Floyd sonic mayhem. If you havent seen it, its truly one of the great hippie classics. The following is my Livejournal post from 2005 about the film.
I saw Zabriskie Point last night with Josef, Tomas and Vera. The acting was terrible, but the lead actors were beautiful of course. very sleepy film, I was not on drugs ... What I loved about the last 20 minutes of the film is that once Daria is in the villa on the mountain, Antonioni could move his camera around the furniture and hallways and one could feel his sense of space and composition .. no dialogue, just this whacked out hippie girl wandering around a rich man's house, zoning out on a fountain, and avoiding people. Trapped in a glass enclosed staircase, she has a brief encounter with a quiet Indian girl, etc etc .. very dreamlike .. and then the explosions started. Watching those dresses shredding in super slow motion, bits of metal rotating like some film on space station Mir .. and Pink Floyd drum breaks opening into raucous power chords .. it should have gone on longer ...
Antonioni had three desert films .. he's a very heavy guy, mentally, and I just have to say I totally dig it Daria is a nice name too I read on imdb that he planned to end the film with a plane skywriting "Fuck Off America" .. I don't know if that's true, but of course MGM nixed that idea .. but its interesting to see how all that was going wrong with post WWII America in 1970 is just 35 years more entrenched these days the main difference then was that for a brief moment in the late 60's people thought it could all change .. nowadays we are just jaded media junkies who knows where the experiment called America will take the world ...